Approach in LaTeX
General
LaTeX does allow to separate content from styling, as it is a markup language (and feels pretty like HTML and CSS if you are coming from it).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language#TeX
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Modular_Documents#Getting_LaTeX_to_process_multiple_files
This way you can put all the formatting options in your base file and then input or include the files which contain the actual content of your work. This means that the important part of your working process, i.e. writing, is kept largely separate from formatting choices (which is one of the main reasons why LaTeX is so good for serious writing!) You will thus be dealing solely with text and very basic commands such as \section, \emph etc. Your document will be uncluttered and much easier to work with..
The commands \input{filename}
and \include{filename}
insert text files (with or without LaTex commands).
For more customization you would need own macro(s) to read the content files and style them accordingly.
Some resources on defining macros (I can´t provide the linked hyperlinks because of my reputation right now):
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Macros
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Creating_Packages
One specific example
I´ve written a software documentation, the actual source code was stored in separate files. The lstinputlisting
package reads the source code and outputs it in a "styled way".
\lstinputlisting[caption=My caption]{sourcefile.lang}