Scintillators as the core materials of radiation detection play an important role in industrial nondestructive testing, medical imaging, high energy physics and safety inspection, etc.. The existing scintillator research faces both opportunities and challenges, especially in the context of COVID-19 pandemic period. It is of great practical significance to develop cost-effective scintillators and optimize their overall performance. The nano-glass composites (i.e., glass ceramics) have some advantages like high emission efficiency of scintillator crystals, simple preparation and low cost as an effective star scintillator. Based on the different luminescence centers, such scintillators can be broadly divided into rare-earth element ions doped or rare-earth-free luminescent nanocrystals embedded materials. This review represented recent development on the preparation of these materials, the relationship between the types of nanocrystals and their luminescence properties, and the potential applications of these materials in high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray detection. In addition, the existing problems in the research were discussed and the future development direction of nano-glass composite scintillators was also prospected.