A method and apparatus for uplink scheduling in a communication system are provided. The method includes determining whether a User Equipment (UE) is included in an uplink scheduling list, a buffer length of the UE is estimated, if the UE is included in the uplink scheduling list, it is determined whether a Buffer State Report (BSR) indicating the buffer length of the UE has been received from the UE, if the estimated buffer length is 0, and the UE is transitioned to a non-zero BSR reception state and maintained in the uplink scheduling list, if the BSR has not been received from the UE. The non-zero BSR reception state is a state in which a zero BSR indicating the buffer length of the UE is 0 has not been received.