Are sequential blocks more likely to be "empty" if solved by the same entity? If not SPV mining, so-called "empty blocks" occur if there are no available transactions to include and is usually when the previous block was solved a short period of time previously.

Is there any reason for this to happen more often if the previous block was solved by the same entity?
It is actually less likely to occur by the same miner. The reason for this is the fact that the miner that found the Block will have already validated it, thus it knows which transactions from the mempool were used. If the block is mined by another person their mining software might not have validated the previously mined block yet, which causes them to be unaware of which transactions were included. Thus an empty block is more likely when it was mined by someone else.