A method for extending dynamic range of phase diversity (PD) is proposed. The estimating of pupil phase is divided into two steps. Low-order Zernike coefficients of the phase are estimated firstly before all of the Zernike coefficients estimated. The method is based on the assumption that the aberrations of the system are dominated by low order Zernike modes, which is true to most practical situations. The algorithm of Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno(BFGS) is used in the two steps for optimizing process. Computer simulations are conducted after the theoretical analysis. The result shows that this method can effectively avoid the trap in local minimum during iteration process, and the dynamic range that PD can detect extends from about 2λ to about 4λ.