The distance-based regression model has many applications in analysis of multivariate response regression in various fields, such as ecology, genomics, genetics, human microbiomics, and neuroimaging. It yields a pseudo F test statistic that assesses the relation between the distance (dissimilarity) of the subjects and the predictors of interest. Despite its popularity in recent decades, the statistical properties of the pseudo F test statistic have not been revealed to our knowledge. This study derives the asymptotic properties of the pseudo F test statistic using spectral decomposition under the matrix normal assumption, when the utilized dissimilarity measure is the Euclidean or Mahalanobis distance. The pseudo F test statistic with the Euclidean distance has the same distribution as the quotient of two Chi-squared-type mixtures. The denominator and numerator of the quotient are approximated using a random variable of the form $$\xi\chi_d^2+\eta$$ ξ χ d 2 + η and the approximate error bound is given. The pseudo F test statistic with the Mahalanobis distance follows an F distribution. In simulation studies, the approximated distribution well matched the “exact” distribution obtained by the permutation procedure. The obtained distribution was further validated on H1N1 influenza data, aging human brain data, and embryonic imprint data.