The issue of angular distributions of the products of photodissociation of diatomic molecules is reexamined on two aspects: (1) the nature of the state that is prepared by excitation from a bound level into a continuum, and (2) a demonstration that a semiclassical connection between the J-derivative of the scattering phase shift and the classical deflection function leads to a recovery of the classical expression for correction of the angular distribution owing to finite rotation of the molecule during photodissociation. Higher-order quantum contributions to this correction also result from these observations.