Well these last two renders do look correct. You're using an Omni, which is a point light so the light comes from one point in space. The backsides of your meshes will be black if there's no other light. In the top shot, the meshes look like inverted cones, so they'll be black on the far side. The bottom shot looks…
you might want to look into the hair and fur modifier instead of the scatter object as it is much more powerfull and recent as the prehistoric scatter object in max. Even with the HF modifier you can instantiate custom poly or mesh nodes - but with greater control.