Natural compound eyes which afford arthropods exceptionally wide fields of view (FOV) are composed of multiple waveguide subunits, monotonically arranged in a hemispherical geometry. Here we present two polymer films encoded respectively with intersecting waveguide lattices (IWLs) and radially distributed waveguides (RDWs) to mimic the wide FOV of compound eyes. Critically however, both structures are in planar geometry, making them easier to process and integrate with other devices. We employ a novel light-based self-writing technique, which exploits the nonlinear propagation of white incandescent light in an epoxy-based photopolymerisable medium to encode the waveguide structures. This optical processing technique is a single-step, room-temperature and cost-effective route, which is suitable for large scale processing. By controlling the number and orientation of the encoding beams, IWLs with lattice-orientation of -30°, -15°, 0°, 15° and 30° and RDWs with waveguides span an angular range from -33° to 33° were inscribed. Encoding IWLs imparts the polymer film a discontinuous overall FOV. Compared with an unstructured but otherwise identical polymer film, approximately 66% FOV enhancement was achieved. Whereas, encoding RDWs imparts the polymer film a continuous FOV of ~113°, which represents the new record of FOV among planar artificial compound eyes. The FOV of RDWs was about 82% greater than that of the waveguide-free counterpart, implying that inscribing waveguides with radially distribution has a big positive impact on increasing the FOV of the polymer film. Due to their facile fabrication process and planar architectures, these waveguide-encode polymer films show strong potential as encapsulants for light-harvesting devices and optical imaging systems.