Valentin Dornel shares a little python script that helps randomly set shader colors in an Autodesk Maya scene. vd_randomShading will allow you to choose from a list of shaders in the scene, and apply them randomly to an object selection.
Here is a demo of my (Valentin Dornel) script vd_randomShading
The vd_randomShading script will also allow you to filter or “mask” by object name, applying shaders randomly to objects meeting that criterion. the script can be found on Valentin Dornel’s site here, check out the vd_randomShading script for maya for randomly applying scene shaders to selected object here.