We report the results of a combined experimental and theoretical study of thin film growth. The theoretical approach is able to capture nonlocal shadowing effects, allows for an arbitrary topology of the growing interface, provides information on the density in the film interior, incorporates surface tension in a natural manner and enables a unified study of diverse growth phenomena ranging from diffusion-limited aggregation to ballistic aggregation. The theoretical results are found to have many of the features observed in our experiments on physically vapor deposited films.