In this work, we have investigated the rare earth substitution effect on structural, magnetic and magnetocaloric properties of La(0.75)Ln(0.05)Sr(0.2)MnO(3) polycrystalline manganites (Ln(=)La, Sm, Eu, Gd, Dy and Ho), synthesized using the sol-gel technique. Replacing La with other rare earth elements induces an enhancement of cationic mismatch inducing a structural transition from rhombohedral to orthorhombic symmetry for highly disordered samples. Temperature dependence of magnetization indicates that our samples undergo a paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition with decreasing temperature. The Curie temperature values decrease with the mismatch increase, but Ho based sample shows a different behavior. The magnetic entropy change curves -Delta S(T) show a large magnetocaloric effect near room temperature. We have also improved the magnetocaloric effect by using theoretical calculation to get theoretical composites.