From my experience, and this is just my experience, there are people who feel like there are important questions and life that need to be answered, and they go and explore those questions and get into philosophy, and there are people who don't think it's important and go without the feeling of emptiness. I don't think I've ever heard of somebody feeling empty due to not having explored philosophy in their late lives (I have heard of people feeling empty and finding religions which are largely anti-intellectual in my opinion) but again this is just my experience.
With regards to the idea of philosophy fixing emptiness, I don't think there's much of a guarantee. It sure is enjoyable for the mind to chew away at philosophical ideas and apply them to social issues, but my journey has been pretty quickly towards nihilism and I don't know if that was for the better. It was going to happen one way or another and it's sure better than believing in something like hell but what I'm saying is that some people go the route of 'you make up your own meaning of life' and 'the finiteness of life makes it all the more precious' but I can't really get around those ideas and I don't think that's an intellectual thing but more of a reflection of personality. What I'm trying to say is that if you're looking to philosophy as a cure to feeling empty, be aware of where you might end up. Just because it's intellectually fulfilling doesn't mean it will necessarily be emotionally or spiritually fulfilling.
The first paragraph above reminds me of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, which, although rather elitist in the way that it puts philosophers on a pedestal, still has some merit. Of course, prior to exposure to questions such as 'How should one live?', 'Does induction secure truth?', 'Are moral properties objective?', and 'What is the relationship between the mind and the body?', no one would think that there is any need to ponder them. Such is the relevance of the aforementioned questions to life, however, that I believe no one would be uninterested in discovering the answers to them once they have been properly introduced to the questions. For example, many students these days go through high school under the impression that the science is moving closer and closer towards the truth. Students who have studied the scientific method would know that science is based on inductive reasoning. Prior to their exposure to the problems of induction, no student would think to question science. However, as soon as they are exposed to David Hume's critique of induction, it is impossible for students not to re-evaluate their views; if induction is flawed, then the whole institution of science would come crashing down. Clearly, a lot is at stake, which is why I think that questions such as 'Does induction secure truth?' cannot be properly ignored. Of course, there are those who have been exposed to such questions but are content to proceed through life with their heads in the clouds. I would argue that such people do experience bouts of intellectual hunger every now and then; they simply ignore these feelings by sticking their head back up into the clouds. By 'empty', I meant 'intellectual empty' rather than 'emotionally empty'. While religions such as Christianity usually do a pretty good job of mitigating emotional emptiness, for a host of reasons, I do not believe that they hold the key to alleviating intellectual emptiness, as you mentioned yourself.
I think that philosophy, if done properly, is guaranteed to make an individual intellectually 'fuller'. To me, philosophy is more a mode of thinking, rather than an exercise involving the selection of, and subsequent subscription to, a doctrine that 'sounds about right'. To many, determinism seems to be the ultimate implication of science; since science operates on the principle of induction, it also necessarily operates on the principle of cause and effect. It seems then, from the outside, that if we are to take the word of science as gospel, then we must accept that event in the world is caused by another event, and that we do not have any ability to break this causal chance. Quickly, people develop a nihilistic perspective on life; if everything I do, I do not of my own conscious volition, but rather under influence of some previous event that has already taken place, then what meaning is there to life? It seems then that life has no real meaning. Many people don't like this conclusion, and so choose to ignore the question entirely out of utility. But ignoring the question does nothing to 'fill' an individual up, intellectually speaking. Deep inside, the individual is still unsatisfied and hungry for answers. Philosophy helps to alleviate this hunger, and involves, not the mindless acceptance but the critical assessment of the doctrine of determinism. How much truth is contained within the doctrine? What are the alternatives? Which doctrine seems to reflect reality more on the basis of my experience? Until such questions are answered, the individual will remain empty, unless he chooses to stick his head back up into the clouds.
It is also important to understand that philosophy is not about finding the view that is most useful for an individual to hold. It is about finding that one view which agrees entirely with one's observations of reality. To use a hackneyed analogy, philosophy is all about choosing the red pill, rather than the blue pill. Of course, the truth might not be convenient, but denying the truth is never the way to go. It may be the case that determinism is true, and that we have no control over our own actions. Such a truth might initially be emotionally scarring, but no good can come out of actively denying this truth. Of course, if such a doctrine does not agree with everyday experience, then something may be wrong with the doctrine itself. But if one is convinced that the doctrine reflects reality as it is, then it is potentially dangerous to simply ignore it. Just like Neo had to learn to come to terms with the fact that he lives in a Matrix, one must then learn to embrace this inconvenient truth, for only then does one have any hope of obtaining true intellectual and emotional fulfilment.