Description:

There's a problem that vktrace just silently fails when the layer is not available, see https://github.com/LunarG/VulkanTools/issues/151#issuecomment-276114862

If you install vulkan-trace and run anything, like
vktrace -p /usr/bin/vkmark -o /tmp/trace -w /tmp/ -v full
it just won't create /tmp/trace.

The json file for the layer is missing from the package, therefore the layer is not found.
The json file is available in the repository where vktrace is built from:
https://github.com/LunarG/VulkanTools/blob/master/vktrace/vktrace_layer/linux/VkLayer_vktrace_layer.json

only this line should probably edited:
"library_path": "../vktrace/libVkLayer_vktrace_layer.so",
without a relative path since the layer is just installed in /usr/lib:
"library_path": "libVkLayer_vktrace_layer.so",

Then the json file needs to be installed as /usr/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d/VkLayer_vktrace_layer.json and vktrace will start working.