Given a multidimensional array that represents AND/OR relationships (example below), you can use a recursive function with array_intersect() to see if another array matches that set of relationships.  

For example: array( array( 'red' ), array( 'white', 'blue' ) ) represents "red OR ( white AND blue )".  array( 'red', array( 'white', 'blue' ) ) would work, too, BTW.

If I have array( 'red' ) and I want to see if it matches the AND/OR array, I use the following function.  It returns the matched array, 
but can just return a boolean if that's all you need:

<?php
$needle = array( array( 'red' ), array( 'white', 'blue' ) );
$haystack = array( 'red' );

function findMatchingArray( $needle, $haystack ) {
    foreach( $needle as $element ) {
        $test_element = (array) $element;
        if( count( $test_element ) == count( array_intersect( $test_element, $haystack ) ) ) {
            return $element;
        }

    }
    return false;
}
?>

Pretty tough to describe what I needed it to do, but it worked.  I don't know if anyone else out there needs something like this, but hope this helps.