In short words, atmospheric scattering is the process of scattering away light when it’s traveling from a light source to a point. The light arriving the point is the result of multiplication of light at the light source and the transmittance between the light source and the point. Transmittance is related to the average atmospheric density (optical depth) between the light source and the point and the scattering constants, i.e. the exponential of optical depth multiplies scattering constants.

Atmospheric scattering is used to simulate sky color. Simulating sky color integrates atmospheric scattering to the light traveling process from sun to any view point in the atmosphere. Specifically, the sky color at any view direction from a view point in the atmosphere is the integration of in-scattered light at each sample on the view ray (starts from the view point and cast towards the view direction) to the view point. The light at each sample is the in-scattered light from sun to the sample. Chaining the process with a ray marching algorithm, the sky color at a specific view direction from any view point in the atmosphere can be approximated in the following steps:

1. For each sample in the view ray:
2. exp(scattering constants multiplies optical depth between sun and sample) -> transmittance between sun and sample
3. exp(scattering constants multiplies optical depth between sample and view point) -> transmittance between sample and view point
4. Sun light * transmittance between sun and sample  -> light arriving the sample
5. light arriving the sample * phase function -> light reflected on the view ray
6. atmospheric density at the sample * scattering constants -> scattering constants at the sample
7. light reflected on the view ray * scattering constants at the sample -> remaining light after it’s scattered by the sample
8. remaining light after it’s scattered by the sample * transmittance between sample and view point -> light arriving the view point from the sample, i.e. sky color from the sample
9. accumulate the sky color from the sample to the final sky color

After all samples in the view ray direction are iterated by the ray marching algorithm, the final sky color is obtained from the 9th (ix) step.