How to choose the transfer function?
I would first check out these links:

Matlab Low Pass Filter

Analog Filter Design

Butterworth

That will give a good indication on how to design filters. The main one is the butterworth because it returns transfer function coefficients in the numerator and denominator. You can use matlab to factor to get poles and zeros, along with changing the order of the filter. The quadratic factor will naturally come in higher order transfer functions, and if it doesn't, play around with the cutoff frequency or order until you see a squared term. A sample run is in the third link as well from matlab.

Some helpful commands as well:


tf()
freqz()
bode()