you could use a photo eye. a photo eye is just like a switch, so you can run a circuit into the eye and then out to your lights.

Watch the load on the electric eye carefully.

They do not have a very large capacity.

You will have to interrupt the circuit feeding the lights at a common point to wire in the electric eye.

For an application like this, a hard wired time switch might be a better solution. Most time switches have much more current handling capacity than photo sensors.