We study the two-body decays of mesons using the covariant helicity formalism. In particular, we show how the partial wave analysis of decays constrains the interacting terms entering the Lagrangian describing the decays of mesons with $J=1$ and $J=2$. We use available information on partial wave analysis to study specific mesonic decays and to make predictions for not yet measured quantities as well as to investigate the isoscalar mixing angle in the axial-vector, pseudovector and pseudotensor sectors. In particular, in the axial-vector sector our result agrees with the LHCb one, and in the pseudotensor sector we confirm a quite large (and negative) angle in the nonstrange-strange basis, which is compatible with a large contribute of the axial anomaly.