In order to achieve precise extraction of the phase with a light feedback mechanism, based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm, an adaptive phase extraction method is proposed in this paper. First of all, the EMD algorithm is acted on the self-mixing interference (SMI) mixed noise signals, then using the principle of HHT to extract the instantaneous phase information in the SMI signal in time and retrieve the true phase of the object from the wrapped phase. In this paper, the phase extraction algorithm based on EMD are simulated under different optical feedback conditions. Finally, an experimental setup based on SMI has been given for demonstration. Experimental results show that this method is correct in principle and can be used in the precise extraction and its maximum error is less than 1.6 rad. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental data, which show the effectiveness of the proposed method.