First I'd say that the general rule is to use the appropriate version of VMware Tools, meaning the version that shipped with the VMware product. That said, yes you could download a different version of VMware Tools and install it however it may cause some issues. I have used different newer versions of VMware Tools in older VMware products in the past mainly with Linux VM's however it was more with just testing to see if it would work around an issue. In some cases it did and in others it didn't
If you choose to do so you'll need to rename the original so it's not overwritten during the individual VMware Tools install. I just added the VMware product version number to the original name, e.g. linux.716.iso and linux.716.iso.sig then untar and execute tools-linux-8.8.6.exe.tar and it silently installs the linux.iso and linux.iso.sig files to the VMware Workstation working directory.
Note: the VMware Tools I linked was the latest for WS v8 which might be better then using the ones from 9.x as there were some major changes although if you nat you can get whatever version you want here.
It should go without saying, however make sure you have proper backups before proceeding!