This paper is concerned with the T-matrix numerical simulation and homogenization of clouds of nanoparticles that are randomly distributed, a problem in which the central physical quantities are the coherent and incoherent fields that must be calculated as the average and variance, respectively, taken over a statistical ensemble of configurations. We numerically show that strongly coupled nanoparticles which are randomly distributed can exhibit unconventional electromagnetic behaviors, far from being predicted by the usual effective medium theories, such as Maxwell-Garnett, even if the size of the particles is several order of magnitude smaller than the wavelength. We will highlight that the computation of an effective refractive index in such resonant regimes is still possible, but it is restricted to the description of the coherent part of the electromagnetic radiation, providing the incoherent counterpart is not dominant. Counterintuitively, incoherent fields and scattering turn out to be here totally uncorrelated. This comes in opposition to the scheme holding for particles, not necessarily resonant, which are not small compared to the wavelength and which, as such, scatter the incoming radiation by size effects. Based on the understanding of light/matter interaction in such regimes, we demonstrate that near perfect absorption can be achieved in the infrared domain by means of randomly distributed scatterers. To do so, a dilute suspension of resonant particles is jointly excited in the aforementioned restricted regimes and put in interaction with bigger dielectric particles.