In a photo-cathode radio-frequency (rf) gun, the micro-bunched charge output from the gun is dependent linearly on the laser injection phase, due to the Scottay effect in the process of photoemission and the procedure of the electron longitudinal acceleration. Based on this principle, a new method is proposed, which should be utilized to measure the time jitter between the driving laser pulse and the rf phase with a very high resolution of a few tens of femtoseconds.