Would be curious to know what this was generally used for and if it was used often.

Would have been laid by a fleet's float planes or limited basic carrier aircraft (like---very basic, pre WW II) to mask your own ships under scenarios such as 1) A turn away from an enemy fleet that had concentrated its salvoed big gun fire successfully against you, perhaps by crossing your "T" (1/2 your guns agains all of his--run away!) or 2) to mask the approach of your surface torpedo carriers, the destroyers and destroyer escorts, to close as fast as possible on the enemy's battle line before popping through the curtain and firing some of their torpedoes before popping back into cover and moving to another location and then firing more torpedoes (torpedoes were the ship killers of the small ships of the fleet and the only thing battleships had to fear from destroyers and destroyer escorts/torpedo boats)

And I'm totally unaware of any scenario under which an aircraft smoke screen was ever used in exactly this way. By vague report, aircraft generated smoke screens might have been part of the landings at Iwo Jima (ineffective---and I'm not sure about this) and the Philippines in WW-II (can't find a reference for this). In terms of aid from a fleet's own aircraft, the closest I can think of is the distraction and cover attacks of Taffy 1, 2, and 3's disparate air craft at the Battle of Leyte Gulf---but they didn't drop a smoke screen---they just attacked Kurita's battleship task force while the destroyer escorts made their runs until Kurita's nerve broke and he turned.

I shared this with my retired AF pilot brother -- he brought up Leyte Gulf, too!