A composite breakwater with an upper horizontal porous plate and a lower rubble mound is proposed and studied in this work. By means of matched eigenfunction expansions, a semi-analytical solution is developed for analyzing the hydrodynamic performance of the breakwater. The semi-analytical solution is verified by known solutions for special cases and an independently developed multi-domain boundary element method solution. Numerical examples are given to examine the reflection, transmission and energy loss coefficients of the breakwater and the wave force acting on the horizontal porous plate. Some useful results are presented for engineering applications.