This review article is devoted to describe how Raman scattering technique can be applied to the phase characterization of technologically important ceramic materials, which we shall restrict ourselves in this paper mainly to high-Tc superconductors and zirconia related ceramic materials. The complementary nature, advantages, and disadvantages of Raman, IR, X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques, most frequently used for the characterization of ceramic materials, are briefly mentioned. We describe the recent developments of instrumentation in Raman spectroscopy, that eliminate many of the potential disadvantages of the Raman technique with respect to detection limits, stray light and fluorescence, and hence greatly expand the range of applicability of Raman spectroscopy to ceramic materials. In particular, the recent development of micro-Raman spectroscopy in conjunction with the use of a charge-coupled device (CCD) detector provides a unique method both for the characterization of micro crystals in ceramic materials with a spatial resolution of about 1µm and for the detection of extremely weak Raman scattered lights previously not detectable. We address our full attention to the various useful capabilities of Raman scattering technique for the study of phase identification of structurally similar compounds (homologues and polymorphs), detection of impurities, observation of low-frequency phonon modes, detection of structural disorder, and identification of phase transformations associated with the displacement of oxygen ions from the ideal crystal sites. It is our hope that this paper will encourage those who are working with ceramics in a future consensus on the basic method of ceramic analysis by Raman spectroscopy.