A method is presented for determining the optical thickness (τc) and effective particle radius (γe) of stratiform cloud layers from transmitted solar radiation measurements. A detailed study shows that the cloud optical thickness and effective particle radius of water clouds can be determined from transmission function rneasurements at 0.75 and 2.13 μm, provided that the scaled optical thickness τ'0.75 ＞1 and γe＞5 μm. The wavelengths adopted by our study are similar to the channels of the moderate resolution imaging spectrometer (MODIS). The proposed method is invalid for optically thin clouds since transmission at 2.13 μm is less sensitive to γe. The retrieval errors of τ'γ.75 and γe monotonically decrease with increasing τc. For clouds having τ'0.75≥2, the retrieval errors of τ'0.75 and γe are below 10 % and 20 %, respectively. Transmissions at 0.75 and 1.65 μm can also be used to retrieve τc and γe.