There is a large, but not gigantic literature in philosophy on the laws of nature. A good place to start is the overview Stanford Encyclopedia articles:
There are many different postitive accounts of laws of nature. But some people have also argued that there are no laws. For example:
At the end of chapter 13, PGS mentions the view of Nancy Cartwright which is that in order for certain laws to be explanatory, they have to be false. This is related to the idea that there are no such things as component forces, but rather, the only thing real is the resultant net force. A relevant paper is 'Do the laws of nature state the facts?" which is reprinted as an essay in this book:
Please ask me if you want to find outside reading about specific topics related to laws of nature (or anything else).