The angular distribution of atoms sputtered from metal single crystals has been used to study atom ejection processes. By analysing this distribution into the sum of a Gaussian and a cosine contribution it is shown that the isotropic background can be removed and considerably improved agreement obtained between theory and experiment. This is applied to the temperature variation of the width of Wehner spots. New experimental results are presented for gold sputtered by 10 keY argon ions over a wide range of temperatures.