To analyze the bending and transverse shear effects of laminated composite plates, a thirteen nodes triangular element will be presented. The suggested formulations consider a parabolic variation of the transverse shear strains through the thickness. As a result, there is no need to use shear correction coefficients in computing the shear stresses. The proposed element can model both thin and thick plates without any problems, such as shear locking and spurious modes. Moreover, the effectiveness of $w_{,n}$, as an independent degree of freedom, is concluded by the present study. To perform the accuracy tests, several examples will be solved. Numerical results for the orthotropic materials with different boundary conditions, shapes, number of layers, thickness ratios and fiber orientations will be presented. The suggested element calculates the deflections and stresses more accurate than those available in the literature.