Transport of solar energetic particles in interplanetary space is analyzed. A new systematic derivation of the diffusion approximation is given, which incorporates the effects of non-isotropic scattering, magnetic helicity, and adiabatic focusing in a non-uniform large-scale magnetic field. The derivation is based on a system of stochastic differential equations, equivalent to the Fokker-Planck equation, and the new method is a generalization of the Smoluchowski approximation in the theory of the Brownian motion. Simple, physically transparent expressions for the transport coefficients are derived. Different results of earlier treatments of the problem are related to the assumptions regarding the evolving particle distribution