In this paper, we introduce a methodology to characterize time-dependent soot volume fraction fluctuations in turbulent diffusion flames via chaotic maps. The approach is based on the hypothesis that fluctuations of properties in turbulent flames are deterministic in nature, rather than statistical. Our objective is to develop models of these fluctuations to be used in comprehensive algorithms to study the nature of turbulent flames and the interaction of turbulence with radiation. To this end we measured the time series of soot scattering coefficient in an ethylene diffusion flame from light scattering experiments and fit these data to linear combinations of chaotic maps of the unit interval. Both time series and power spectra can be modeled with reasonable accuracy in this way.