Steel structures are designed to operate in an elastic domain, but sometimes plastic strains induce damage and fracture. Besides experimental investigation, a phase-field damage model (PFDM) emerged as a cutting-edge simulation technique for predicting damage evolution. In this paper, a von Mises metal plasticity model is modified and a coupling with PFDM is improved to simulate ductile behavior of metallic materials with or without constant stress plateau after yielding occurs. The proposed improvements are: (1) new coupling variable activated after the critical equivalent plastic strain is reached; (2) two-stage yield function consisting of perfect plasticity and extended Simo-type hardening functions. The uniaxial tension tests are conducted for verification purposes and identifying the material parameters. The staggered iterative scheme, multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient, and logarithmic natural strain measure are employed for the implementation into finite element method (FEM) software. The coupling is verified by the ‘one element’ example. The excellent qualitative and quantitative overlapping of the force-displacement response of experimental and simulation results is recorded. The practical significances of the proposed PFDM are a better insight into the simulation of damage evolution in steel structures, and an easy extension of existing the von Mises plasticity model coupled to damage phase-field.