Quantitative relations between discomfort glare evaluation and photometric quantities such as illuminance at the observer’s eye, average luminance of the source area, average luminance of the effective area and effective glare luminance for white LED sources having a variety of spatial luminance distributions have been investigated. Effective glare luminance, which is the sum of luminances in the luminaire area divided by the effective area, explains the scaling results of all sources in the same way. In addition, a new equation modified from the Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage Unified Glare Rating formula using the effective glare luminance showed a strong correlation with the scaling results. It is thus suggested that effective glare luminance is a useful index of discomfort glare for light sources having different spatial luminance distributions.