This was possible in 2.79b but is not in current 2.79 branch as well as
2.8

Not sure if rB175e8fdc1e2e never made it to 2.79b release but I guess that commit is the reason here.
(it swapped RNA_scene_itemf with new RNA_scene_without_active_itemf, the former was passing local=false to rna_id_itemf, the later was passing local=true to rna_id_itemf)
(local=true will prevent linked IDs / scenes to show up...)