In order to investigate the influence of different scattering models and effective particle radii on the cirrus cloud optical thickness retrieval, we simulate the reflectance of different effective radii based on General Habit Mixture (GHM), Solid Column (SC) and Aggregates of Solid Column (ASC) under different cirrus cloud optical thicknesses. The influence of different scattering models and effective radii on the retrieval results of the cirrus cloud optical thickness is theoretically analyzed. The cirrus cloud optical thickness look-up tables of GHM, SC and ASC are calculated by radiative transfer model RT3 based on vector doubling-adding method. The cirrus cloud optical thickness is retrieved by the look-up table method based on the POLDER data. It is found that the retrieval results are consistent with the theoretical analysis. The theoretical analysis and retrieval results show that, for different models, the cirrus cloud optical thickness retrieval results are obviously different. Compared with the GHM and SC models, the retrieval results of cirrus cloud optical thickness by the ASC model are closer to POLDER products. In addition, for these models, the retrieval results of the cirrus cloud optical thickness increase with the increase of effective radius. The results of the ASC model are no obvious increase with the increase of the effective radius, and the results of the GHM and SC models increase greatly with the increase of effective radius. Therefore, when the instrument lacks the ability to retrieve the effective radius, it is suggested that the ASC model can be used to retrieve the cirrus cloud optical thickness, so as to reduce the influence of the effective particle radius variation on the retrieval results. This study can help to develop cirrus cloud optical thickness algorithms for GF-5 satellite in China.