In this paper, we used various shear deformation functions for modelling isotropic, symmetric composite and sandwich plates discretized by a mixed finite element method based on the Lagrangian/Hermite interpolation functions. These shear deformation theories uses polynomial, trigonometric, hyperbolic and exponential functions through the thickness direction, allowing for zero transverse shear stresses at the top and bottom surfaces of the plate. All shear deformation functions are compared with other available analytical/3D elasticity solutions, are predicted the reasonable accuracy for investigated problems. Particularly, The present results show that the use of exponential shear deformation theory (Karama et al. 2003; Aydogu 2009) provides very good solutions for composite and sandwich plates.