For ground-state dipole moments and 1PA strengths, we observed larger errors but could recover good accuracy with a layered model where the MFCC-based M2P2 potential is used for residues inside a small shell around the chromophore. The 2PA strengths were found to be more sensitive to the quality of the potential and thus require larger shells in order to obtain good accuracy. To reach the same accuracy using a distance cutoff, which would be the alternative approach for reducing the computational cost, essentially requires a full MFCC-based M2P2 potential. The accompanying reduction in computational cost associated with the calculation of the potential when compared to a full MFCC-based M2P2 potential is 50-70 % depending on the size of the shell. This will thus make it affordable to perform accurate large-scale spectroscopic studies of molecular systems that include protein environments including a proper configurational sampling.