Abstract: A complete detection model of scattering visibility meter (SVM) was established and the sounding data of fog and aerosol under the typical weather conditions were gathered. On this basis, a calculation of the light scattering characteristics of atmosphere fog and aerosol based on Mie scattering theory was presented. It emphatically analyzed and simulated the light scattering characteristics and its influence on the detection performance of forward scattering visibility meter (FSVM) and total scattering visibility meter (TSVM). The results show that atmospheric scattering characteristics have significant effect on the sounding error of SVM, and FSVM are more affected by them than TSVM; The sounding error of FSVM was similar to TSVM in fog conditions and is approximately 6% bigger than that of TSVM in aerosol conditions; The luminous flux is received from TSVM which is about 7 times more than from FSVM under the same atmosphere conditions, but the scattered light leaking from TSVM must not been still ignored to avoid very large system error; The sounding errors of FSVM and TSVM are approximately 4.06% and 5.54% respectively in fog conditions, and are approximately 35.806% and 30.33% respectively in aerosol conditions if the sounding error of luminous flux is ignored. The results are valuable to optical path design of SVM, error analysis and antitheses tests.