Well, the bullet spread/scatter doesn't matter in regard of damage, assuming the distance is still the same between you and the target, for body shots - either the bullet will hit or not. Naturally, there may be a very specific distance where a straight bullet will be still before the distance threshold and a not-so-straight bullet over the threshold as it will need to pass a longer distance to hit a more distant body part or so, but that requires so specific conditions and may not even happen due to a limited calculations precision or that the distance is calculated from the object origin/center mass and not the surface that it's not worth a consideration.
If the target is running away from you and so it will pass the threshold (so you will suddenly do 20 damage instead of 25 damage for the stepped falloff and you will need 5 hits for 21m instead of 4 for 20m), the linear progression will actually make it even worse for the very same distances, because you will need 5 hits instead of 4 with damage like 21 even before the 20m (assuming that in both cases the weapon does 20 damage at 21 meters). But the linear progression may get an advantage of a higher damage in other cases for other distances, of course, depending how it's set (the distance thresholds aren't always exactly comparable).
But, if we are speaking about the bullets-to-kill against a full-health target, the effect is still the same - after some distance you will need an extra bullet to kill the target, regardless the falloff is linear or stepped. What that distance is only depends how the linear or stepped progression is set for each weapon. In the game reality, for BF2042 and BF6, I didn't notice any major difference with the stepped falloff approach, so I don't mind having it this way. :)