Widest LED viewing angle I can expect to find?

I have a project where the (ordinary, low power) LEDs will be viewed mostly from the side so I need as wide a viewing angle as I can get. They also need to be RGB. I've found a seller on eBay selling LEDs with specifications:
View Angle: Water Clear 360 degrees
Frosted 250 degrees

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5MM-4PIN-...hash=item462144711d:m:mqyB3epsbOPqtGT-DENBu-w

Is that realistic? Almost everyone else is selling LEDs with viewing angle 25-30 so I'm wondering whether this information is very likely to be incorrect.

They're going to be soldered together in a chain/tower.

I'm not sure about individual leds, but I do know that most led strips will give you 120 degrees of light if that offers any help.

with secondary optics you can make pretty much any viewing angle you want

No, looking at those LEDs, and using the common definition of 'viewing angle', that's not realistic at all.

The vast majority of LEDs are brightest when viewed straight on. That would be zero degrees. As you move toward the side, increasing the angle toward 90 degrees, the brightness normally falls off continuously to zero. The common definition of viewing angle is "twice the angle at which the intensity drops to 50%". Most LEDs of the shape you linked to have viewing angles between 20 and 120 degrees, though smaller and larger numbers are possible.

So to have a viewing angle of 360 degrees, the LED would have to be at least half as bright when viewed from directly behind as when viewed from directly in front. While this is not technically impossible, I can absolutely guarantee you that the particular LED you linked does not do this.

With that said, we might take another definition of "viewing angle" to be "twice the angle from which the LED can be observed to be illuminated". If we were to take this definition, then the 'frosted' one (which is more commonly called 'diffused') might make 360 degrees (it's the one spec'd at 250), but there's little chance the water clear one exceeds or even approaches 250 (and this is the one spec'd at 360).

If you want to see it mostly from the side, then the 'frosted' one is your best bet of these two. But there are other designs that would be better for viewing from the side. One that has straight cylindrical sides and a conical depression in the top comes to mind.

http://www.luxeonstar.com/carclo-17mm-side-emitting-optic optic

http://tomsha.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=44 led


also 5 mm through hole led have similar reverted conus design now you know what to search ;-))

https://www.superbrightleds.com/cat/through-hole/filter/Viewing_Angle,91,39,120:?view=standard

Thanks, everyone. They're actually super hard to find! I'd almost given up but found some on AliExpress. I'd rather have got them anywhere else but I couldn't find them anywhere else.

Edit: I changed my order to the common anode ones.