The single photon scattering echo characteristics of targets were studied in this paper. An optical scattering characteristic measurement system was built based on infrared single photon detector and picosecond laser. The number of echo photons was used to characterize the optical scattering characteristics under the condition of single photon detection. In this experiment, the single photon scattering characteristics of targets with different shapes (sphere, cube, cylinder and cone) were studied. And the results were fitted by using the bidirectional reflection distribution function model. The experimental results were in good agreement with the theoretical fitting ones. Further, the single photon scattering characteristics of targets with different materials (ceramic tile, wood and wall brick) were studied, which were compared with the traditional wave scattering characteristics. This study provides a reference for the long-range target recognition and detection of single photon lidar.