He started composing music in the early 1980s, and his first Punjabi album was of the singer Hakam Sufi, titled "Mela Yaaran Da". From there he went on to compose music for numerous albums for artistes like Hans Raj Hans, Sardool Sikander, Kuldip Manak, Gurdas Maan, as well as Punjabi movies like "Jatt Jeaona Mour" (1991) "Badla Jatti Da" (1991), delivering many multi platinum selling albums on the way.

During this time, he mentored a then young and raw singer Surjit Bindrakhia. Along with the lyricist Samsher Singh Sandhu, the three formed perhaps one of most legendary and finest team in Punjabi music. Starting from Bindrakhia's first album "Munda Ki Mangda", which became widely popular in Punjab, the trio delivered some of Punjabi music's most popular music ever. The Success of the first album carried forward with the massive hit "Bas Kar Bas Kar" in 1992, and then "Dupatta Tera Satt Rang Da" in 1994 which established Bindrakhia as the global superstar of Punjabi Music. The single "Dupatta Tera Satt Rang Da" went on to top the UK music Charts for numerous weeks, and became one of the first Punjabi songs to sell a million copies in the UK. For the same album, Atul Sharma was presented a platinum record at the Wembley Arena in the honour of the albums record breaking success. This success was followed by further hits like "Lakk tunu tunu", "Mukhda deke ke", "Billiyan Akhiyan", "Saanu tedi tedi takhdi tun", "Peke hunde maawan naal" and "Yaar Bolda", a song that has reached a cult status in Punjabi folk music the world over.

In 2001 he started his own audio recording studio in Chandigarh called "Saffron Touch" which became one of the first studios to adapt to modern digital recording methods and equipments. The studio has also become one of the most popular studios for Artistes, Musicians, Film Directors from Bollywood as well as all over the world.

Similar to his success with Bindrakhia, Atul Sharma mentored Harjit Harman and their partnership with lyricist Pargat Singh has yielded some of the biggest hits in recent history. The album "Punjebaan" received great commercial as well as well critical success, with the Title track "Punjebaan" and "Mitran da naa chalda" becoming super-hits all over the world. His further albums were also highly acclaimed and commercially successful with "Hoor", "Mundri", "Jhanjhar", and the most recent single "Jatti" being the stand out records. He received the award for the "Best Music Director" at PTC Music Awards for the song "Mitran da naa chalda" in 2005, and then for the song "Jatti" in 2015. "Jatti" was also given the award for the "Best Folk Oriented Song".