speed of light - Photons when passing through matter

I am wondering whether there is a simple—or complicated—way to explain from a purely quantum mechanics (or QFT) viewpoint what happens to the photons when they go through some material whose index of refraction is greater than 1 (or complex if you want to take the case of a metal).

The explanation should therefore discard the use of "EM fields" because the light has to be quantized. The material should be thought as atoms or molecules I suppose.

I've been told that the explanation that says that photons are being absorbed by atoms and re-emitted with a slight delay and thus explaining why light is slower in a material compared to vacuum is wrong, because if the photons were absorbed and re-emitted the delay would be stochastic and so a laser beam entering a transparent material would leave the material at different times which is not observed in practice.