A simple parametrized phase function for small non-absorbing spheres

A phase function for small non-absorbing spherical particles was designed by us some time back. It has been remodeled in this paper and is expressed as a power series in the size parameter. This has been done empirically by studying the behaviour of the exact spherical particle phase functions for several sizes and refractive indices. In numerical comparisons it shows excellent agreement with the Mie phase function in its new form too. The error estimates show that relative root mean square error, which is a measure of the overall quality of agreement with Mie phase function, is less than 5% when size parameter is ⩽1.5 and refractive index of the sphere relative to the surrounding medium is ⩽2.0.