Far-field intensity distribution of semiconductor microdisk lasers is experimentally measured and the emission angle is found to be much smaller than that of a planar source with the same near-field width. In fact the emission angle is determined mainly by the disk radius instead of the disk thickness. A scalar diffraction theory in the cylindrical coordinate is developed to explain such an emission-angle-narrowing phenomenon and numerical calculation based on a vectorial diffraction theory is carried out to explain the measured polarization state. ©1998 American Institute of Physics.