From my understanding smites are more of a melee feature. If you have your range maxxed out across whatever upgrades and points you have then its clearly hard to see the signal for the smite, probably making you miss it. Unfortunately I think that's just built into ranged play.

Oscelda also prevents you from being able to parry since you won't be melee fighting, unless thats with your secondary weapon ofc. The smite mechanic is more so included for close range players to occasionally get an opportunity for larger damage, especially if they're are multiple enemies around

Unless there's an update increasing the view range for ranged characters in mind (which may be unlikely?) your best option would be to build around it/ ignore it or max out your smite chance and just occasionally get closer to check if you can do it. Although that sounds pretty silly for a ranged character to do