Let (R, m) be a Noetherian local ring. In this work we extend the notion of mixed multiplicities of modules, given in [12] and [9] (see also [3]), to an arbitrary family E, E 1 , . . . , E q of R-submodules of R p with E of finite colength. We prove that these mixed multiplicities coincide with the Buchsbaum-Rim multiplicity of some suitable R-module. In particular, we recover the fundamental Rees's mixed multiplicity theorem for modules, which was proved first by Kirby and Rees in [9] and recently also proved by the authors in [3]. Our work is based on, and extend to this new context, the results on mixed multiplicities of ideals obtained by Viêt in [25] and Manh and Viêt in [13]. We also extend to this new setting some of the main results of Trung in [20] and Trung and Verma in [21]. As in [12], [9] and [3], we actually work in the more general context of standard graded R-algebras.