The free vibration problem of symmetrically laminated composite rectangular plates is formulated based on anisotropic thick plate theory including the effects of shear deformation and rotary inertia. Considering the difficulty of obtaining closed-form solutions, Rayleigh-Ritz analysis using polynomials having the property of Timoshenko beam functions as trial functions is adopted. The boundary conditions elastically restrained against rotation are accomodated as well as classical boundary conditions. From the results of numerical studies, the validity of the present method is verified. And it is also found that the adoption of thick plate theory for the vibration analysis of laminated composite plates is essential because of the relatively large shear deformation effect, and that the convergence of the Rayleigh quotient to the stationary value is less rapid in anisotropic composite plates than that in the orthotropic ones due to more complicated mode shapes of the former.