Node dependencies installed outside of the app's directory

Question

I'm trying to set up a very simple Node.js app with the help of DirectAdmin on the shared hosting I'm using. I have problems running it because when I install dependencies using DirectAdmin's UI, they are installed not in the app's directory, as it's normally the case, but in the nodevenv directory (also not directly but in the <appname>/16/lib/node_modules. Then when app runs it doesn't know that dependencies are located in another directory and it crashes on startup. I don't know how can I set up my app so that it searches for node_modules in some other directory. I know about prefixes but I don't know how can I leverage those to direct the app to a proper directory.