The protection of sensitive optical equipment has been the focus of much attention in recent times. Of great important is the protection of the human eye from potentially harmful intense beams. The optical limiting properties of axially substituted indium phthalocyanines in solutions and in the solid poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) composite films were investigated for these purposes. Embedding the phthalocyanine as inclusion in PMMA host significantly improved the linear absorption coefficient and effective third order susceptibility and considerably reduced the saturation energy density of parent compound at 532 nm as a result of the higher concentration of absorbing molecules in the PMMA than in solution.