I think the "phased-array radar" you're referring to would be more precisely called "active-phased-array radar". Yes, the concepts are similar. By providing a calibrated time delay between elements of the array, the direction of focusing can be controlled. I'm not sure how this is done in practice for actual radars. If it is done in hardware, the array would have a single steerable pattern. If instead each array element has a clock-synchronized direct conversion digitizer, the beamforming can be done in the digital domain and the number of logical beams would be limited by the DSP capacity available.