In ocean-atmosphere system, errors may be resulted in retrieval of the water-leaving reflectance without regard to aerosol vertical distribution, so that it affects the precision of ocean-color remote sensing. The effect of aerosol vertical distribution on the top of the atmosphere (TOA) reflectance was simulated by radiative transfer model. The result indicates that the error of the TOA reflectance () achieves 10%, especially 30%, while aerosol vertical distribution isn’t appropriate. The relative error () increases with increasing aerosol optical thickness and aerosol absorption. The effect of relative azimuth angle on increases with increasing aerosol absorption. For strongly absorbing aerosols, increases with decreasing the height of distribution.