A set of 32 commercially produced and printed matte-coated papers were rated for gloss quality by a panel of 13 expert judges and light scattering distributions, gloss, and gloss variation measured. Fitting the light scattering distributions to Von Mises distributions, we obtain a factor, kappa, related to the width of the distribution and sensitive to small changes in surface roughness, which relates very well with the subjective rating. Gloss variation in certain surface spatial wavelength bands also correlates well with the gloss quality rating. The topography of the samples was also measured using confocal microscopy and the relationship between light scattering and paper topography is discussed.