The VL6180 is a very small, pretty accurate, I²C-based distance sensor. And it can also measure ambient light. I wrote a simple library for Micropython for talking with it, mostly based on the Sparkfun's Arduino library. The code is at: https://bitbucket.org/thesheep/micropython-vl6180/src/tip/vl6180.py

Note that this library uses the new I2C interface, which is currently available on Micropython for the ESP8266. It should eventually be available on all Micropython ports, though.

Example:

import time
from machine import I2C, Pin
from vl6180 import Sensor

i2c = I2C(sda=Pin(4), scl=Pin(5))
sensor = Sensor(i2c)

print(sensor.range())