Find number of instances in spreadsheet

Good morning,

I’m trying to count the number of times a specific phrase exists in a spreadsheet. I’ve tried COUNTIF(A1:H17, “=phrase”)  but what I really need is a way to find not exact matches, but cells containing the phrase I want to count.

Is there a wild card I can use in place of the “=” or a different function that will count this for me?

Thanks,

Robby