The effective thermal conductivity of a layered system due to the propagation of surface phonon-polaritons is studied. We analytically demonstrate that the thermal conductivity of a set of nanolayers can be described as one of a single layer with an effective permittivity, which does not ordinarily appear in nature and depends on the permittivities and thicknesses of the individual components. For a two-layer system of SiO2 and BaF2 surrounded by air, it is shown that: (i) the propagation length of surfaces phonon-polaritons can be as high as 3.3 cm for a 200 nm-thick system. (ii) The thermal conductivity of the system with total thickness of 50 nm is 3.4 W/m·K, which is twice that of a single layer of SiO2, at 500 K. Higher values are found for higher temperatures and thinner layers. The results show that an ensemble of layers provides more channels than a single layer for the propagation of surface phonon-polaritons and therefore for the enhancement of the thermal conductivity of common polar materials. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.