Laser-light diffusers are used in conjunction with pulsed lasers to generate bright, spatially uniform background illumination for imaging and particle sizing applications. The present paper describes a cost effective way of fabricating a fluorescent laser-light diffuser. The procedure to obtain a uniform background using laser illumination is explained. To characterize the diffuser, images are acquired using a CCD camera with the illumination provided using the diffuser and the variations of pixel intensity values along the centerline of the images are plotted. It is observed that the standard deviation of pixel intensity values is fairly small. Hence, these diffusers are suitable for experiments that need a uniform background. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.