You can see light at any range
I did some googling, and while it's pretty hard to find specific citations from scientific studies, the places that I've been able to find say that the human eye can see a candle from somewhere between 10 and 30 miles away. The curve of the Earth is about 3 miles away. Thus, any significant light is at least barely visible from any range that you're likely to have line of effect. The houserule that I've used for a while now is that you can see a light source at ten times the distance that you can see a non-lit object without penalty.
That said, the vision rules in every edition of D&D that I've seen are actually reversed. They only work if both the looker and the looked-at are in the same lighting conditions. The vision rules on PHB 183 state:
In a lightly obscured area... creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom(Perception) checks that rely on sight.
A creature in a heavily obscured area effectively suffers from the blinded condition.
Nothing in those rules says that you can't see a creature if that creature is inside darkness and you aren't. This is clearly ridiculous. This weirdly reversed rule has existed since at least 3.0, and shows how little the designers thought about what to do about differing light conditions.
What this means is that you should rely on your intuition more than the rules for what will give penalties based on vision. Since, IRL, lights can be seen from the horizon, you can probably see someone with a torch from at least a few hundred feet, probably out to a mile or so.
As far as being blinded is concerned, my intuition was always that that penalty happened because you couldn't see the ground beneath your feet, or the things that are around you. Thus, I would rule that a character who can see a light hundreds of feet off is still blinded, except for the purposes of making checks or attacks against targets who are lit up.
Effectiveness of such an action should be resolved by an Ability Check.
While you are right that kicking a small object is a Free Action in combat, that doesn't mean you always succeed automatically. Sure, simple, trained actions like drawing a sword are not rolled for, but if you want to achieve a specific advantage with such action, you have plenty of interesting skills to choose from.
Most obvious would be to use a Strength check (Athletics) or Dexterity check (Acrobatics?), depending on your players description of the action. You could then place appropriate modifiers reflecting the terrain (mud, wooden floor, grass?), difficulty (Sword of Spiky Mistakes or Club of Harmlessness?) and other factors. Then, depending on whether the outcome is high medium or low you can adjudicate an appropriate distance.
Don't overthink this
Of course, the rules say little about such situations, but how many times do you imagine your players will kick something in combat? Stick to well-known simple systems and invent house-rules only if they don't work. It's more important to give a quick ruling and move on rather than ponder on what would be an accurate simulation. Treat it like a "miscellaneous" situation it is and go forth with the adventure. If your players complain, talk about the matter between sessions and decide on some rules that work for everyone.
Best Answer
There are no rules governing sound and audibility.
And at first I thought this would be a simple "rulings, not rules" matter in 5e. "C'mon, have you ever heard a music box?" I thought. "Just figure it out in ten seconds with your GM and move on." But...
There are a lot of things that depend on sound/audibility. Enough that maybe there should be rules on it.*
As a brief survey, we've got many Bardic class features, many charms/enchantments, turning undead/faithless, Battle Master maneuvers, Blindsense, the Inspiring Leader feat, and the "Unseen Attackers and Targets" section of combat... and dozens of spells!
Turning to the DMG, "Noticing other Creatures" (p.243) would be a nice place to find a bit of suggested rules--but it's silent. It does tell us that "if neither side is being stealthy, creatures automatically notice each other once they are within sight or hearing range of each other." And that's it. Never a discussion about what a reasonable hearing range might be.
So it's worth developing a decent system. I'll leave that to you and your GM, but here are the relevant touchstones I see:
* @KorvinStarmast rightly points out that my suggestion that one should develop a more-systematic approach to sound and hearing goes against the explicit 5e design philosophy of trying to simplify, staying away from excessive simulationism. My suggestion that one might codify this is based upon the surprise I felt when I discovered just how important sound is, just how many mechanics do key off of it. You, of course, should play your game. And enjoy!