render pass vs render layer

I'm working on a project in maya and I'm not sure how to best proceed.

I have a base scene setup, with all the elements that don't change across multiple animations (lighting, hopefully render settings, some geometry + textures). I want to use this scene as a reference and then add different animations on top of it.

I originally set up render layers for AO, Depth pass, Diffuse, Specular, etc. I've also tried setting up Render passes all on the master layer exporting as multi channel exr. I would like to use the render pass method for all the 'child' scenes that reference the original base scene but cannot figure out how to transfer the render pass settings from the referenced scene. Since I have alot of nparticle and nhair effects in these scenes I don't want to have to do seperate renders for each render layer if possible.

Is there a way to keep all the render settings from the referenced scene without having to reset everything in every new animation?

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