but climbing at night into the overcast with the landing lights shining into the cloud, this would be most disorientating.
You can say that again. It beats me why pilots persist in leaving landing lights on in cloud. Swirling cloud patterns can quickly affect concentration. In the "old" days landing lights were only ever on for initial take off and switched off within seconds of being airborne. For landing they were switched on about 300 ft. Then some bright spark thought why not have the landing lights on at 10,000 ft on descent (off at 10,000 ft during climb after take off). This was supposed to be a good idea for collision avoidance. Sure its lovely to see all these aircraft in the terminal area with landing lights displayed. Handy for ATC to visually see who is coming their way - but not absolutely essential as far as the pilots are concerned if under ATC.
In another life in 737's I have done hundreds of black night blackhole take off and landings and no shortage of night/IMC go-arounds either. However, on go-arounds in IMC at night, it takes less than two seconds to switch the lights off and saves getting distracted and partially blinded by the lights reflecting from cloud. Call it good airmanship. Finally slave-like devotion to FD needles that require total concentration to keep the needles centred on a go-around, can be a real trap as they hide the "little aeroplane" which is the vital instrument on go-arounds. I envy the `aces` who claim they have no problem looking behind the FD needles because I'm buggered if I can without getting distracted.