Thin metallic buffer layers are commonly used between semiconductor substrates and noble metal films or nanostructures. We propose an extended two-temperature heat transfer model that can be used to investigate the heat flow in multilayer antennas and includes metallic layers, a dielectric substrate, and their respective interfaces. It is demonstrated how the heat flow dynamics in a layered material, excited by short laser pulses, can be controlled by the thermal properties of the buffer layer. A large buffer layer electron-phonon coupling was found to induce a non-intuitive reverse internal heat flow in the layered material and transient energy retention on time scales of a few tens of picoseconds, while the buffer layer-substrate Kapitza conductance was found to be the limiting parameter for the heat dissipation on nanosecond time scales.