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A computational model for the propagation of laser radiation within cylindrical geometry is developed in C++. This model employs a finite difference technique to model the Pad approximant of the light propagation (Helmholtz) operator to solve the scalar Helmholtz equation obtained using the slowly-varying envelope formalism. This technique is capable of handling wide-angle propagation and refractive index variation while still maintaining numerical speed and simplicity. In addition, this model uses a non-linear map from the infinite physical space to a finite computational space to avoid spurious reflections from the computational window edge and improve computational efficiency. Also, the model depends solely on the spatial refractive index and hence can be coupled in a time-slicing scheme to an optical thermal model that can include linear and non-linear optical effects as well as capture thermal lensing. As an application of the model developed here, predicted irradiance at the retina of laser light incident on the human eye could be used to establish new maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits.