When an aircraft is descending, does any lift act on it? If yes, how?
You seem to be confusing angle of attack and pitch angle. The pitch refers the orientation of the aircraft: where is the nose pointing? The angle of attack is the angle of the wings relative to the incoming air stream. Both can take on any value independent of each other. For example, one could imagine an aircraft falling straight down, but wings level. The pitch angle is then zero, but the angle of attack is 90 degrees!

Similarly, the pitch angle can be negative for a continuous steady state descent (and often is for a steep descent). However, you correctly identify that an aircraft on approach generally does not go into a freefall. The lift acting on the airplane is still (approximately) the same. A positive angle of attack is thus still required. As a result, the aircraft will be descending even steeper than where the nose is pointing, resulting in a positive angle of attack (the angle between the pitch vector and the even steeper velocity vector).