Particle sorting/layering question

I'm working on particles for smoke and fire, and in general the layering/ordering isn't an issue.

Most of the time I want specific fire or smoke to overlap the other, so I can just set the "Order in Layer" value to a specific number to fix that, but my problem comes in with a certain set of fire that "consumes" or burns up the smoke. This fire should overlap the smoke that it is mixed in with.

I set it so that this fire will have a higher priority than the smoke it overlaps with, but the smoke systems repeat, and when another smoke system is in front of the fire, and not being consumed by the fire, the fire still shows through it, when it seems that distance should be coming into play, and overriding the order in layer.

So the real question is there a way to use order in layer in combination with distance, where distance will take precedence, but order in layer still matters for the rendering of particles that are overlapping or in the same general area?

EDIT: Here's some screenshots. The first one just shows the fire showing through the smoke at a distance, which is the behavior I want to fix. The second shows both behaviors, the area circled in blue is showing like I want it to, but that part circled in red is rendering through a large cloud of smoke, and should not be visible. Let me know if that doesn't really make sense.