You can use a newer version on tools by mounting the windows.iso into the VM or as you mentioned replace the ISO in the folder.
Whether it is approved/supported that's a different matter; as that doesn't stop let's someone with an earlier version of VMware Workstation with VMware Tools one that comes with a more recent release.
If you want to place safe and extract only specific drivers, for example, the SVGA 3D driver, you can execute setup64 /a from command prompt and it should prompt you to enter a folder to extract the contents to and you can manually install the driver.