[Suicide Junkie]

The leaky shields do help a LOT against the tiny fighter weapons, and if you force them to spread out into smaller stacks with anti-fighter missiles, then the leaky shields work even better.

But when there are hundreds of fighters zinging around, some with mini-torpedoes, you'll simply get crushed by the massive volume of fire... one of those hits will leak through to a shield generator and your defenses will start to crumble.

The distraction may be worth it, and allow your fighters to get a few rounds of free hits to turn the tide of the fighter war, or the enemy fighters may just ignore your ship in favour of blasting at your cloud of fighters.
It all depends on the strategies you each have set, really.