Upconversion photoluminescence (UCPL) of rare-earth ions has attracted much attention due to its potential application in cell labeling, anti-fake printing, display, solar cell and so forth. In spite of high internal quantum yield, they suffer from very low external quantum yield due to poor absorption cross-section of rare-earth ions. In the present work, to increase the absorption by rare earth ions, we place the emitter layer on a diffractive array of Al nanocylinders. The array is designed to trap the near infrared light in the emitter layer via excitation of the plasmonic-photonic hybrid mode, a collective resonance of localized surface plasmons in nanocylinders via diffractive coupling. The trapped near-infrared light is absorbed by the emitter, and consequently the intensity of UCPL increases. In sharp contrast to the pure localized surface plasmons which are bound to the surface, the hybridization with diffraction allows the mode to extend into the layer, and the enhancement up to 9 times is achieved for the layer with 5.7 µm thick. This result explicitly demonstrates that coupling the excitation light to plasmonic-photonic hybrid modes is a sensible strategy to enhance UCPL from a thick layer.