This study proposes a numerical model based on the depth-integrated non-hydrostatic shallow water equations with an improvement of wave breaking dissipation. Firstly, studies of parameter sensitivity were carried out using the proposed numerical model for simulation of wave breaking to understand the effects of the parameters of the breaking model on wave height distribution. The simulated results of wave height near the breaking point were very sensitive to the time duration parameter of wave breaking. The best value of the onset breaking parameter is around 0.3 for the non-hydrostatic shallow water model in the simulation of wave breaking. The numerical results agreed well with the published experimental data, which confirmed the applicability of the present model to the simulation of waves in near-shore areas.