My preferred configuration for a Laravel 4 API endpoint running over PHP-FPM, when I need to talk to it with AngularJS.

app.domainname

server {
    root /path/to/app/public;
    index index.php;

    server_name test.dev;
    set $cors_headers "whatever-custom-headers,you-would-like";

    # redirection to index.php
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini

        # With php5-fpm:
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;

        # cors configuration
        # whitelist of allowed domains, via a regular expression
        # if ($http_origin ~* (http://localhost(:[0-9]+)?)) {
        if ($http_origin ~* .*) { # yeah, for local development. tailor your regex as needed
             set $cors "true";
        }

        # apparently, the following three if statements create a flag for "compound conditions"
        if ($request_method = OPTIONS) {
            set $cors "${cors}options";
        }

        if ($request_method = GET) {
            set $cors "${cors}get";
        }

        if ($request_method = POST) {
            set $cors "${cors}post";
        }

        # now process the flag
        if ($cors = 'trueget') {
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' "$http_origin";
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';
        }

        if ($cors = 'truepost') {
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' "$http_origin";
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';
        }

        if ($cors = 'trueoptions') {
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' "$http_origin";
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';

            add_header 'Access-Control-Max-Age' 1728000; # cache preflight value for 20 days
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
            add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'Authorization,Content-Type,Accept,Origin,User-Agent,DNT,Cache-Control,X-Mx-ReqToken,Keep-Alive,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,$cors_headers'; # I have not yet verified what happens if $cors_headers is empty and there remains a trailing comma. I'll explore later if it becomes a problem.

            add_header 'Content-Length' 0;
            add_header 'Content-Type' 'text/plain charset=UTF-8';
            return 204;
        }
    }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/test.dev.error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/test.dev.access.log;
}