Welcome to Android Central! Go to contacts.google.com on your computer browser. Do you see the contacts there? If not, then was this a Samsung phone? If so, then maybe your contacts might have been backed up to your Samsung account.
However, if all of those contacts were entered into the local Phone account, those unfortunately don't sync or backup anywhere automatically -- you have to do that yourself. That's why I always recommend saving your contacts to your Google account. When entering a new contact, it's always important to be aware of which account it's saving to.