Stepper phase windings

I have a lot of small stepper motors with 16 leads (8 pair of windings). Is there some procedure I can go through to find the phase order of the windings. I mean, I need to apply power to these windings, in order, so that the motor will move in the most efficient manner. I tried an oscilloscope on one set of leads while generating a sinusoidal signal on another but the difference in inducted voltage was not enough to tell me which set of leads was closest to the one into which I was generating the signal.