It is well known that the existence of unstable sampled zero dynamics is recognised as a major barrier in many control problems. When the usual digital control with zero-order hold (ZOH) or fractional-order hold (FROH) input is used, unstable sampled zero dynamics inevitably appear in the discrete-time model even though the continuous-time system with relative degree more than or equal to three is of minimum phase. In this paper, we show how an approximate sampled-data model can be obtained for nonlinear systems by the use of multirate input and hold such as a generalised sample hold function (GSHF) in order that discrete zero dynamics of the resulting model can be arbitrarily placed. Furthermore, the properties of sampled zero dynamics are studied and the conditions for ensuring the stability of sampling zero dynamics of the desired model are derived. The results presented here generalise well-known notion of sampling zero dynamics from the linear case to nonlinear systems, and GSHF can provide some advantages over ZOH or FROH in terms of stability of discrete system zero dynamics.