Does your loot level with your char?
Solution 1:
Most of the differences in loot is mainly down to what mods they've got.
The various types of loot (pistol/rifle/shotgun/etc for guns, leather/metal/raider/etc for armor) in their unmodded form have similar base stats regardless of what level you're at, the difference is as you get further into the game the loot you get from enemies has more mods on it.
There are certain things (like plasma rifles) which can be more difficult to find because they're used less by your enemies and some types of armor and weaponry will only drop "later in the game" but if you were to go straight to those locations and kill those enemies now they'd still drop similar loot, if you know what I mean.
Solution 2:
Loot drop is not influenced by the level of your character, but it can be influenced by the level of difficulty your playing on.
The higher the level of difficulty, the greater the chance of spawning legendary enemies. These guys are much tougher, but drop loot with unique benefits, such as increased attack damage, or a boost to your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats.
If your character is getting stronger, and enemies appear too weak, it is definitely worth raising the difficulty to take advantage of these changes.
Solution 3:
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: depends, mostly yes though.
The loot scales with character level in terms of what type of armor/weapons you find on enemies, for example: below level 10 you'll hardly ever find combat armor but mostly raider/leather/metal equipment. However this is not taking into account that certain types of NPCs always wear certain armor types, like diamond city security.
the same goes for weapon types, for example super mutants will most likely drop boards or hunting rifles while early in the game, but later they might also have a laser weapon or fancy swords, though some super mutants (usually associated with certain locations) will have really powerful weapons, even early in the game.
so for the gazillion random encounters in the waste, the loot level does rise with your character level, based on enemy scaling. it's like in skyrim really, at first they all just have leather/iron armor/weapons and later they get glass/elven/steel/dwarven/ebony/daedric etc.