SQL & PL/SQL

I have an input parameter which contains symbols "*" (star symbol), example:

i_search_par := 'country * street';

I gonna do query:

select * from SearchTable
where col1 like i_search_par;

I want that the "*" would act the same way as "%"-symbol in LIKE operator.

So i want that query would return such results:

'country 1 street'
'country 200 street'

and so on.

What is the better way to achieve this, that "*" is going to be interpreted as a "any number of any symbols"?

Maybe i can say something like:

SET SESSION ANYCHAR SYMBOL = "*".
And after doing that Oracle understands in LIKE operators that star-symbol is like i want?

Or should i really do string replacement by replacing ""%" to "*" in "i_search_par" and in other 30 such varaibles?