The propagation and redistribution of radiation in surface-atmosphere medium can be fully described by vector radiative transfer equation, which is the basis of quantitative remote sensing. How to deal with the questions of multiple-scattering effect, the polarization effect of the scattered radiation and the surface reflectance model is essential to an accurate simulation of vector radiative transfer equation, which affects the precision of quantitative remote sensing. This paper solves the vector equation of radiative transfer by using the successive orders of scattering approach; it includes the bidirectional reflectance distribution function （BRDF） model and bidirectional polarized reflectance distribution function （BPDF） model of surface reflectance. The index of relative errors was used to quantitatively study the effect induced by the difference of surface reflectance models and the polarization effect. Based on the studies, the basic theory of quantitative remote sensing using vector radiative transfer equation is proposed.