Music can strongly suggest to the audience what they should be feeling, but it can also tell them who or what to feel FOR (or even feel with) depending on the emotional point of view that you score from.
For example, maybe there is a scene between a husband and a wife arguing. There are many different emotional points of view in this scenario that the music can follow emotionally.
The music could follow the emotional feelings of the mom in the scene, who is devastated and sorrowful from the beginning of the conversation.
The music could follow the dad's feelings, who maybe starts the conversation off feeling more indifferent but grows in passion as the argument progresses.
This scene could be scored from the perspective of the small child in the other room, who is confused and scared the whole time.
Or the music could blanket the entire scene in "sad" music, to communicate a the broad notion to the audience that this family in a sad state of affairs, without directing you to feel for any person in particular at that moment.
What emotional point of view you choose to follow affects the audience's emotional perspective of the scene, and bonds the listener with the character whose POV the music follows.
The "Inner" P.O.V.

Let's say that the "inner point of view" is music that is written to follows a specific character's feelings.This approach is more personal, and is like "zooming in" emotionally to get inside the head and heart of a specific person. This encourages the viewer not simply to feel ABOUT them but to feel WITH them--to truly empathize. Spielberg and Williams can be found using this approach frequently throughout their films. In the Film "The Terminal", we do not hear any music until about 12-15 minutes into the film, when our protagonist, Viktor Navorski, feels a significant emotion for the first time.
The "Outer" P.O.V.

The "outer point of view" is when the music is broadly written to express thegeneral feeling of the scene, without focusing on the emotions of specific people. This approach is less personal but can be better for getting big-picture perspective. Consider these two different approaches like "zooming in" or "zooming out" emotionally.
In the mountain crossing hero-shot from the Fellowship of the Ring (you know, the one where the group has just departed from Rivendell and we hear the "fellowship" theme in all it's glory as the camera swings around our heroes in slow motion against the 360 degree back drop of gorgeous New Zealand mountains), the music is not crafted to follow the feelings of any particular characters POV, but takes the outer (or transcendent) POV. It covers the scene in a mood, like a blanket, and feels like an epic music video.
This approach is more impersonal, and does not lead me to care about or feel for any of the individual characters more, but it does remind me that there is a broader purpose of the fellowship that transcends individual people. And I care about that purpose more as a result.
This makes the "Outer POV" approach very appropriate for this scene and for much of a film like LOTR (where it's used often), which is largely about ideals and stakes that are bigger than any of the individuals in the film. But an inner POV approach is also used in those film at times where we are intended to connect with specific characters more deeply.
Conclusion
So when you are approaching a scene to score, consider which point of view the music should follow to meet the needs of the scene. This is really a conversation that should be happening in the spotting session with the director, so be sure to discuss it together. You may find that in some scenes you need to "zoom out" emotionally to emphasize the broader emotional point of the story, and for some scenes you many "zoom in" emotionally and feel alongside a character the audience is supposed to connect with.
(This article is based on a lesson from my course Film Scoring for Beginners.)