Light scattering from particles show unique angular scattering patterns, which are strongly dependent on the particle size to incident wavelength ratio and the refractive index contrast between host medium and the particles. Multiple scattering becomes important when the particle concentration increases, which complicates the angular scattering distributions. In many cases, empirical phase functions have to be applied. A novel empirical phase function was introduced to describe the angle-dependent distribution of scattered light from a collection of micro/nanoparticles inside a thin layer. Angular dependence of light scattering from a polymer host containing sub-micron dielectric and metallic particles was measured. The method gives an excellent approximation to the angular effects of multiple scattering arising from aggregation, non-spherical shape and surface roughness. In addition, it is also a good approximation in the single scattering regime, since it closely reproduces scattering phase functions of particles in the Rayleigh, Mie and geometrical optics regimes. The feasibility of our approach was demonstrated by its ability to fit experimental data on the forward and backward scattering profiles of plasmonic and dielectric submicron particle composite layers. The robust and wide applicability of our method is expected to attract a board interest from researchers in physics and materials science.