If you have phing inastalled by rpm or pear, you don't have to configure phing on system configuration page.
Phing plugin uses phing script in the path.

yeah i have installed by pear. yea if i delete configuration it starts working, but why it breaks if configured manually ? i mean people with multiple versions of phing can't use it, because settings don't work

I DONT have it installed from rpm or pear which is why I attempted to use this option. I pull phing via composer and wanted to use that install.
I then ran into this exact problem. It should be calling /path_to_phing/phing.php -buildfile ... but it leaves out the first part, making this configuration option somewhat useless.

Code changed in jenkins
User: Seiji Sogabe
Path:
src/main/resources/hudson/plugins/phing/PhingInstallation/help-home.html
src/main/resources/hudson/plugins/phing/PhingInstallation/help-home_ja.html
http://jenkins-ci.org/commit/phing-plugin/4df061fcbf8ba11777c1e9f6d7c1f54afd29da87
Log:
noted that you can use environment variables such like $WORKSPACE.
JENKINS-19110

in the latest version of plugin 0.13.3 the issue is back and even if the phing is not configured in global settings:

output:

usr/bin/php phing -buildfile /var/lib/jenkins/jobs/dev/workspace/build/build.xml -Denvironment=dev -Dbuild_number=356 test -logger phing.listener.DefaultLogger
Could not open input file: phing

somehow it tires to execute phing sh script through php either it has to run phing command or /usr/bin/php phing.php
it's starting to get really annoying

Using Jenkins v1.614,
phing plugin 0.13.3,
java 1.7.0_79

i've tried all the version of plugin, and the only version that works correctly is 0.12:

[build] $ phing -buildfile /var/lib/jenkins/jobs/dev/workspace/build/build.xml test -Denvironment=dev -Dbuild_number=361 -logger phing.listener.DefaultLogger
Buildfile: /var/lib/jenkins/jobs/dev/workspace/build/build.xml

any progress on this ?