Abstract: The soil arching effect is widely proven to be in geotechnical engineering.However, research on the soil pressure caused by the soil arching effect is currently limited to single-layer soil, and the distribution of active soil pressure behind multi-layer soil is still unclear.Therefore, based on the soil arching effect theory, this article proposed a solution for nonlinear active earth pressure behind retaining walls of multi-layer soil, and studied the influence of internal friction angle and friction angle between wall and soil on the distribution pattern of active earth pressure based on two typical strata.The results show that the proposed solution can effectively describe the distribution of active earth pressure behind multi-layer soil.The calculation results are basically consistent with the numerical simulation results.When the parameters of the upper and lower soil layers are consistent, the proposed solution can degenerate into a soil pressure calculation model of single soil layer.When the friction angle between wall and soil is fully utilized, the soil pressure behind the upper soil wall is significantly affected by the internal friction angle of the soil, while the friction angle between wall and soil is partially utilized, the soil pressure behind the lower soil wall is more affected by the wall soil friction angle.