How can I replace newline or \r\n with <br/>?

There is already the nl2br() function that inserts <br> tags before new line characters:

Example (codepad):

<?php
// Won't work
$desc = 'Line one\nline two';
// Should work
$desc2 = "Line one\nline two";

echo nl2br($desc);
echo '<br/>';
echo nl2br($desc2);
?>

But if it is still not working make sure the text $desciption is double-quoted.

That's because single quotes do not 'expand' escape sequences such as \n comparing to double quoted strings. Quote from PHP documentation:

Note: Unlike the double-quoted and heredoc syntaxes, variables and escape sequences for special characters will not be expanded when they occur in single quoted strings.

Try using this:

$description = preg_replace("/\r\n|\r|\n/", '<br/>', $description);