In this paper, the idea of electromagnetic surface (EMS) is introduced into the design of microstrip antenna array. The antenna element proposed in this paper is treated as an EMS element, whose reflection characteristics are taken into consideration in the process of antenna array design. Firstly, a rectangular patch antenna element is designed. Then, by cutting arc-shaped structure into a rectangular patch, another element is created to generate 180° ± 30° effective phase difference compared with original antenna element. As a consequence, 180° ± 30° effective phase difference is obtained from 5.5 GHz to 6.9 GHz for the y-polarized incidence. Meanwhile, for the x-polarized incidence, each of the two elements possesses high absorptivity over the operating frequency as a result of matching load. Besides, the two elements work in the same resonant mode and the same resonant frequency band when treated as radiators. In order to further explain the consistency in radiation and difference in reflection between the two structures, current distribution at 5.8 GHz is investigated in terms of radiation and reflection. Then, the two elements are arranged into a chessboard array to achieve the low scattering performance based on phase cancellation principle under the y-polarized incidence. Based on the absorption principle, the matching load is added to improve the scattering performance of the composite antenna array with the x-polarized incidence. Simultaneously, the proposed antenna array maintains good radiation characteristics due to the consistency between the radiation performances of the two elements. The corresponding antenna array is fabricated and tested. Simulated and measured results prove that the proposed antenna array also achieves good radiation performance. And a 6 dB radar cross section reduction is obtained from 5.6 to 6.2 GHz under the xpolarization and from 5.5 to 7.0 GHz under the ypolarization for the normal incident wave, implying 10.1% and 24% in relative bandwidth, respectively. In-band reflection suppression in the specular direction is demonstrated for an incident angle of 30° under both polarizations. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones. Additionally, the approach proposed in this paper offers an effective way to deal with the confliction between radiation and scattering performance, and can also be applied to other kinds of antenna arrays.