An analytic model describing the distribution of the electron temperature created by absorption of an optical beam with a cylindrical symmetry in a layered structure, was developed. Main attention was paid to the contribution of the lattice heating in the stationary and non-stationary regime. It was shown that both the spatial distribution of the incident stationary beam and the temporal distribution of the incident pulses can be retrieved from the spatial and temporal electron temperature dependence near the illuminated surface. Electron temperature distributions can be measured using the thermoelectric effect. Experimental results of the spatial and temporal measurements of the thermoelectric voltage were compared with the theoretical calculations and a satisfactory agreement between experimental and theoretical results was found near the incident beam center for the quasi-stationary regime. The experimentally derived Seebeck detector responsivity equals 17.5 microVolt/Wcm-2.