The surface effect close to the boundary of a small light-scattering object in a highly scattering medium is experimentally demonstrated. This is the first attempt to measure the surface effect of a small spherical scattering object in 1% intralipid solution by use of developed diffuse photon-pairs density wave (DPPDW) in terms of the amplitude and phase detection. Theoretically, the surface effect of a small scattering object in turbid media is localized close to the boundary according to the perturbation theory, concerning an inhomogeneous distribution of the diffusion coefficient in the frequency-domain diffusion equation. Hence, an improvement of the spatial resolution of the image via an inverse algorithm, which relates to detection sensitivity of localization to the boundary of the image object in a multiple scattering medium, is anticipated. In this study, we demonstrate that DPPDW is able to sense the surface effect of a 2-mm spherical scattering object in 1% intralipid solution, with high sensitivity. Subsequently, an improvement of spatial resolution of imaging in turbid media by using DPPDW in comparison with conventional diffuse photon density wave (DPDW) using inverse algorithm is discussed.