Concerning the ranging inaccuracy problem based on radio signal phase information under multi-path environments, a two-step ranging approach based on double tags was proposed. Each target was attached with double tags. Through single frequency subcarrier amplitude modulation, firstly, the wrapped phase information of carrier signal was extracted, the distance between reader and tag within half wavelength of carrier signal was calculated and fine ranging estimation value was achieved. Secondly, the unwrapped phase information of subcarrier signal was extracted, and the integral multiple of half wavelength within the distance of reader and tag was calculated. Thirdly, the average multiple was calculated between double tags, the distance of average multiple of half wavelength was used as coarse ranging value. Finally, the final ranging result was estimated by the sum of the fine ranging value and coarse ranging value. Additionally, single reader and double-tag based geometric localization method was introduced to reduce the cost of hardware facilities. The simulation results show that, under multi-path environments, compared with the directly ranging with subcarrier phase, the average ranging error of double tags based two-step ranging approach is reduced by 35%, and the final average localization error is about 0.43 m, and the maximum error is about 1 m. The proposed approach can effectively improve the accuracy of phase based localization technology and also reduce the hardware cost.