Phenomena of wave transmission through a multidirectional composite laminate immersed in a fluid have been investigated. Based on a recently-developed recursive stiffness matrix method time-domain beam models have been developed to simulate the problem. Experimental and theoretical results at frequency 2.25 MHz show that the transmission amplitude is highly dependent on lamina orientation and angle of incidence. Large transmission amplitude appears at small (<10 degrees) and large incident angles (45 degrees-60 degrees). At intermediate incident angles (16 degrees-40 degrees) the transmission amplitude is almost zero. At high frequency, the residue epoxy layers between each lamina become important and corresponding resonances may be observed. These transmission phenomena have been interpreted in terms of Floquet waves. It shows that the pass and stop bands of the three Floquet waves obtained from the unit cell stiffness matrix determine the transmission amplitude distribution in frequency, incident angle and rotation angle domains. The effect of random deviation of the laminated structure periodicity has also been assessed. At normal incidence, the variation of the thickness of the epoxy residual layer between composite lamina has little effect on the overall stop and pass band structures but introduces random reverberation and scattering in the pass bands. It is shown that for oblique incidence the transmittivity spectrum of a composite with random lamina lay-up converges with increase of randomness to that of a [0/-45/90/45]2s quasi-isotropic composite. Randomization of lamina lay-up produces a small effect in the transmittivity spectrum for a quasi-isotropic composite.