LÖVE

I noticed there is no way of simulating friction for particles. In many other particle systems I've worked with there is a "damping" parameter that tells you by what percentage of its current velocity it should slow down each frame. This would be really useful for emulating dust puffs and similar effects.

Is there currently any way of emulating this through some hack or modifying the particle system to support it?

well friction is a force... and a force causes an acceleration... so in the built in particle system I would guess you would set either the radial, tangent, or linear accelerations to be negative. I haven't played with it myself, and am in no position to set it at this time. Although I suggest playing with those.

I'm guessing you need radial acceleration, as I know radial velocity is velocity that is going towards, or away (depending on a negative sign or not) of the relative object (In this case the emitter).
Tangent acceleration is the acceleration perpendicular to the line form the emitter to the particle at the given time. So if a particle is directly up from the emitter (negative Y in this case [because of the canvas]), than the acceleration would be the x axis.
Linear acceleration is just acceleration relative to the axis and not the emitter, X and Y.

But this is just what I gathered in this. And a knowledge mix of physics classes and mostly EvE Online's advanced settings. (Although I was not aware of Linear Acc. til just 2 minutes ago.)