The excitation of soliton states in optical layers exhibiting Kerr nonlinearities is theoretically investigated. The optical transmission coefficient is obtained as a function of the intensity of an incident light beam. The incident electromagnetic wave is considered to be monochromatic and linearly polarized in the transverse electric configuration. In materials exhibiting self-defocusing nonlinearity, soliton excitations are not observed if the product of the nonlinear dielectric coefficient of the slab and the absolute square of the incident electric-field amplitude is below a well-defined value. At such a limit, a soliton excitation with a position-independent electric field amplitude is observed within the nonlinear layer, regardless of the frequency value of the incident wave.