The shielding effects of a thin bubbly layer submerged in pure liquid on the propagation of acoustic waves are analyzed. By using the method of matched asymptotics, conditions across the bubbly layer are derived. They are: (1) that the pressure is continuous and (2) that the jump of normal velocity is related to the temporal derivative of pressure times a parameter representing the bulk property of the bubbly layer. This parameter is the product of a small number and a large number. The former is the wavenumber times the integral of the gas volume fraction β across the layer and the latter is the ratio of the density times the square of the speed of sound for the liquid phase to that for the gas phase. When the thin bubbly layer is adjacent to a rigid surface, their combined effect is described by an impedance boundary condition.