In order to study the influence of tungsten carbide (WC) dispersions on the mechanical properties of nickel-based alloy coatings, the composite coatings with different mass fractions of tungsten carbide (≤15%) were fabricated on 316L stainless steel substrate by laser cladding (LC) technique. The microstructures and mechanical properties, e.g. hardness and wear resistance, which are related to the composite coatings with different WC contents were characterized and analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and tribology testings, respectively. Results show that the melting pool exhibits an obvious bimodal structures at the top of the overlaps where the fine equiaxed grains are on the top of the coarse columnar grains. Due to the gravity effect, the heavy WC particles is tend to aggregate at the bottom of melting pool, and the tendency of uneven dispersion of WC particles increases with the higher of WC concentrations. The hardness and wear resistance of WC/nickel-based composite coatings were also enhanced with the increments of WC additions. Hardness of 15% WC/nickel-based composite coatings increased about 11.4% with a large reduction in the friction coefficient by about 19.62% compared with the pure nickel claddings, and the abrasion morphology showed that the wear-resistance enhancements of hard particles in low content WC/nickel-based composite coatings was relatively weak. The improvement of the wear resistance of the composite is mainly attributed to the increase of overall hardness of composite coatings.