Transport collision integrals for low-lying excited states of nitrogen atoms and ions are derived in the framework of a phenomenological approach following, where possible, also the traditional multipotential procedure. The two sets of results are compared considering critically the observed deviations, and finally, the proposed model is validated by comparison with oxygen atom-atom interactions. In addition, an attempt is made to extend the proposed phenomenological method to interactions involving high-lying excited states, taking into account the symmetric interaction of two excited hydrogen atoms, characterized by increasing principal quantum number.