As stated by denniston.t, if you are only interested in circles, and you have a radius, you can simply check if the Great Circle Distance between the center point and the point is less than the radius. To find the great circle distance you typically use the Haversine Formula. The following is my implementation in python:
from math import radians, sin, cos, asin, sqrt
def haversine(point1, point2):
"""Gives the distance between two points on earth.
The haversine formula, given two sets of latitude and longitude,
returns the distance along the surface of the earth in miles,
ignoring potential changes in elevation. The points must be in
decimal degrees.
"""
earth_radius_miles = 3956
lat1, lon1 = (radians(coord) for coord in point1)
lat2, lon2 = (radians(coord) for coord in point2)
dlat, dlon = (lat2 - lat1, lon2 - lon1)
a = sin(dlat/2.0)**2 + cos(lat1) * cos(lat2) * sin(dlon/2.0)**2
great_circle_distance = 2 * asin(min(1,sqrt(a)))
d = earth_radius_miles * great_circle_distance
return d