The phrase "a thin layer of dust" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a light covering of dust on a surface, often implying neglect or lack of cleaning.
Example: "After weeks of not using the old bookshelf, it was covered in a thin layer of dust."
Alternatives: "a light coating of dust" or "a fine film of dust."
Black, possibly an Arab from North Africa, covered by a thin layer of dust.
A thin layer of dust appeared on his finger: residue from the jackhammering outside.
The carbon-fibre bristles do not produce the static electricity that causes a thin layer of dust to cling to hard floors.
The Northern Echo, a small British newspaper, reported that residents in Loftus woke up Sunday to find a "thin layer of dust covering vehicles".
But other findings from instruments on the lander, which were beamed back shortly before it powered down into a hibernation mode, suggest that the comet is largely composed of water ice that is covered in a thin layer of dust.
So nobody really knows how much mass the kilogram is losing or indeed, whether it is gaining the weight of a thin layer of dust and impurities which must surely be gathering on its hundred year-old surfaces.
SHARAD has provided strong evidence that the LDAs in Hellas Planitia are glaciers that are covered with a thin layer of debris (i.e. rocks and dust); a strong reflection from the top and base of LDAs was observed, suggesting that pure water ice makes up the bulk of the formation (between the two reflections).
Most of these apparently form when the dust devil removes a thin layer of bright dust from a darker substrate.
The grass and leaves around the huge sorting shed, where the Zorba had been taken, were covered with a thin layer of aluminum dust.
Any dark material on the surface would rapidly become covered with a thin layer of obscuring dust if there were not some way in which it was regenerated.
