It is shown that the phonon deformation potentials in semiconductors can be determined by Raman scattering on hydrostatically and biaxially deformed samples. The complete data includes biaxial deformation in the (100), (111), and (110) planes. Biaxial strain is applied to the sample using the recently developed membrane method. The phonon displacement under biaxial strain can be directly obtained from Raman measurements on a single membrane provided we determine the strain from the splitting of the band gap using e.g. the photoreflectance technique. Alternatively, the ratios of different phonon shifts can supply the necessary information. The method is illustrated with experimental results for GaP.