With the assumption that nonspherical mineral dust aerosols are considered to be a mixture of randomly oriented spheroidal particles with particle size and shape distributions, the scattering properties of nonspherical mineral dust aerosols at visible wavelength (0.47 μm) are theoretically simulated based on the T-matrix method and improved geometric optics method (IGOM). The corresponding results related to laboratory measurements and equal volume spherical particles are also presented for comparison. The results indicate that it is feasible to simulate the scattering properties of nonspherical dust aerosols by considering dust particles to be a mixture of randomly oriented spheroidal particles with particle size and shape distributions, and the differences between equal volume spherical particles and spheroidal particles are obvious for single scattering phase matrix (especially single scattering phase function) when compared with the differences associated with single-scattering albedo, asymmetry factor and extinction efficiency. Moreover, by comparing the radiative properties of dust aerosols at the visible wavelength for spheroid and sphere particle shape assumption, it is found that the effect of particle shape on the single scattering properties cannot be neglected in simulating the radiative properties of nonspherical dust aerosols.