Layers section is not in the render settings panel? I'm very new to Blender and I have been watching some tutorials on how to make models within it. In every one of these, their render settings (In the properties tab) have a Layers section below the Performance section. 

My version of blender does not seem to have that, at least by default. I've looked around the user preferences and haven't found anything. Thanks for helping.
I assume that you are mixing two different tabs of the Properties editor into one.
The Performance section is in Render tab of the Properties editor (camera icon), see image below:



The Layers and Passes sections (which are needed for compositing) are in the Render Layers tab (small pictures icon, second from left), see image:





Check out this BlendFile. Note that there are two render Layers (A and B). 

Both have scene layers 1, 2 and 10 enabled in Scene layer selection. 

In Render Selection, "RenderLayer-A" has layers 1 and 10 enabled, and 
"RenderLayerB" has layers 2 and 10 enabled.