p-Function for Empirical Distributions

Does R have a p-function for empirical distributions? In other words,
how can I find out what fraction of the values in my data set are
smaller than a given value?

Jane,

Two separate questions. The answer to the first is "yes". This you could
have found, for instance, with:

??empirical

which gives you link to ecdf or empirical cumulative distribution function.
See its examples and help.

The second question can be answered without the use of ecdf(), although
ecdf() returns a function that can be used to answer to your question.

Cheers, Jari Oksanen