diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 3c1f3339..34e72b8e 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -527,6 +527,16 @@ zipinfo .serverless/xxx.zip
 
 If you can't see the library, you might need to adjust your package include/exclude configuration in `serverless.yml`.
 
+If you would like to recursively include a directory and all of its contents,
+prepend `-r ` to the file list member:
+
+```yaml
+custom:
+  pythonRequirements:
+    dockerExtraFiles:
+      - -r /path/to/additional/dependencies/
+```
+
 ## Optimising packaging time
 
 If you wish to exclude most of the files in your project, and only include the source files of your lambdas and their dependencies you may well use an approach like this:
diff --git a/lib/pip.js b/lib/pip.js
index 149c0285..6d2050ad 100644
--- a/lib/pip.js
+++ b/lib/pip.js
@@ -339,7 +339,13 @@ async function installRequirements(targetFolder, pluginInstance) {
       }
 
       for (let path of options.dockerExtraFiles) {
-        pipCmds.push(['cp', path, '/var/task/']);
+          let cmd = ['cp', path, '/var/task/'];
+          // Copy recursively if -r option was specified
+          if (path.startsWith('-r ')) {
+              path = path.split(' ')[1];
+              cmd = ['cp', '-r', path, '/var/task/']
+          }
+          pipCmds.push(cmd);
       }
 
       if (process.platform === 'linux') {