In structured light measurement, the current phase error compensation algorithms always lead to phase error overcompensation or under-compensation as the ambient light is varied. Therefore, a new correction method for the phase compensation errors was proposed. Based on analyzing the impact of ambient light on phase errors of four-step phase-shifting method, the reasons of phase error overcompensation and under-compensation were illuminated, the expression of the phase errors was deduced and a method to correct the phase compensation error was proposed. To compensate phase error accurately, a group of four-step phase-shifting images, sixteen-step phase-shifting images, black and white images were projected to the calibration plane, then the operation was repeated in eight different ambient light conditions to obtain several groups of coefficients. Subsequently, the analytical expression was obtained by a curve fitting. Experimental results show that the accuracy of phase error compensation is 0.002 rad no matter under dark or light environments when the method is applied, which is about 9.6 times higher than that without phase error compensation and about 3.5 times higher than that with Look-Up-Table(LUT) compensation only. This method is characterized by higher accuracy and reliability and can be used to compensate the phase errors in varied ambient lights accurately.