Experimental studies about the reflection of bounded acoustic beams onto plane liquid–solid interfaces show that for an incidence at or near the Rayleigh angle, the reflected field exhibits unexpected properties. In particular, this phenomenon has been observed ten years ago by Neubauer and it is now well understood: The key is the reradiation in the liquid medium of the Rayleigh wave generated by coupling with the incident beam. Theoretical descriptions of this feature have been proposed that are based upon asymptotic or numerical considerations on the velocity distribution along the interface. In this paper, these previous theories are enlarged in the following sense: The incident beam is now defined by its velocity distribution along a plane emitter; the reflected beam is described through its pressure field in a region which is not restricted to the interface; several incident beam profiles are considered. Moreover, the short wave asymptotic analysis is different from the previous ones; here field integral representations are evaluated by means of the steepest‐descent method.