Is there a way to do Like against a list of Values using the PHP API?

Question

I need a way to find all articles that are related to a list of tags.

Assuming the Articles_c object has a column Tags_c that holds a comma separated list of all tags that are applied to the article. Something like this:

$articleTags == "php, newb, salesforce, soql"

Here is some semi-pseudo code that represents what I am trying to do:

$filter = array('%php%', '%soql%')
$query = "SELECT Id FROM Articles__c WHERE Tags__c LIKE $filter";
$result = $salesForceConnection->query($query);

Is this possible with the PHP API? If so, how do I need to format $filter for it to create a valid query to accomplish what I want?