empty()
empty — Determine whether a variable is empty
In other words, it will return true if the variable is an empty string, false, array(), NULL, “0?, 0, and an unset variable.
is_null()
is_null — Finds whether a variable is NULL
In other words, it returns true only when the variable is null. is_null() is opposite of isset(), except for one difference that isset() can be applied to unknown variables, but is_null() only to declared variables.
The table below is an easy reference for what these functions will return for different values. The blank spaces means the function returns bool(false).