How to serve Laravel files over nginx reverse proxy to Apache2 - apache

Question

I have a setup where a server running nginx will be the front-end and also a load balancer that will upstream to a number of other servers which will be backend.
What I currently have is the webservers running nginx and reverse proxying to apache2 running on port 8000.
The idea is to have visitors first log in to the subdomain apps.xxxx.xxx which contains a list of all the companies applications. Upon clicking on one, then you get redirected to one of the apps which also has it's own login credentials that will be provided to potential customers to have a test run before purchasing.
All these apps are required to run from the one domain but from different paths.
Eg. apps.xxxx.xxx/app1 appps.xxxx.xxx/app2
Find attached my nginx config on the app servers
server {
listen 80 default_server;
root /home/MY_NAME/myapp/public;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
server_name _;
#location / {
# try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
#}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
}
location / {
proxy_pass http://SAME_SERVER:8000;
include proxy_params;
#try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
}
location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
location = /robots.txt { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
sendfile off;
client_max_body_size 100m;
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
location ~ /.well-known {
allow all;
}
}