No data available on empty field - list page

Hello,
I am wondering if anyone is having the same issue. I think it is very weird. On the list page I have a field called "IS" set as custom view where I pull records from another table using data from the current list page. But if the custom view field in this case "IS" is empty no data is available for me to use I used print_r($data) on custom view to see if there was anything but it doesn't show anything if the field is empty. Is there a work around for this?
I hope this makes sense.