Abstract In this study, different diffusion agents have been employed for preparing optical diffusers. Compared with their properties, significant differences exist in UV-shielding, near infrared shielding, dispersion, light scattering, and etc. The characterization comparison can be found in the testing. As the result of UV shielding effect and infrared shielding properties, fillers that contain the CeO2 perform well in UV shielding as well as ZnO quantum dots, while fillers that contain γ-AlOOH show excellent near infrared shielding effect. Based on diffusion effect in vertical direction, optical diffusers prepared by ZnO-CeO2@polysiloxane and ZnO-Qds@polysiloxane can exceed the level of commercial diffuser. Besides, the diffuser prepared by ZnO-Qds@polsiloxane show lower dependence on incident angle and perform well in aging properties. Moreover, the microspheres prepared by hydrothermal method show the best dispersion. In addition, some fundamental mechanisms are summarized and analyzed, which is a guide for preparing optical diffusers. Hence, such diffusion agents can be considered as a simple comparison for selecting excellent multifunctional optical diffusers.