Nanostructured materials have a prominent place in technological advances due to their physical and chemical properties that can be quite different from those found in the same material in bulk form. In the first part of this thesis, random laser scattering centers (RL) were investigated. natural nanostructured materials such as quartzite and cellulose. In this context, we used cellulose and quartzite as scattering centers for random lasers, suspended with ethylene glycol, to characterize these systems defining the laser threshold and full width half maximum (FWHM) of these random lasers. Other random laser configurations are also presented, such as thick cellulose film and guided wave with quartzite suspension. Another area of research with great impetus, after the discovery of graphene, is that associated with 2D materials, such as Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs). The second part of this thesis is related to the characterization of nonlinear optical properties (NLO) which is of enormous importance for applications of 2D materials in optoelectronic devices and in nanophotonics. In the second part of this thesis, the thermal and electronic NLO properties of TMD-type materials were characterized, to determine the values of the nonlinear refractive index and the nonlinear absorption coefficient of these materials, using the Z- scan technique.