First install the right open-vm-tools package:

# sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools-dkms

then you can mount the shared folder with following command:

# sudo mount -t fuse.vmhgfs-fuse .host:/ <mount point> -o allow_other

please make sure that the mount point exists. to make this permanent and mount at boot, edit your /etc/fstab file and add

.host:/ /mnt/hgfs fuse.vmhgfs-fuse allow_other 0 0

Important: FUSE can only be used with kernel >4 and open-vm-tools >10, otherwise the simplest solution is to install VMware Tools