i have managed to achieve the desired result with help of Imagick and compositeImage. here is the result
how i achieved it is kind of a trick that works only in a very specific condition- which is the need to have the background white and only black/gray objects in front (or the exact opposite). this technique wouldn't work on a background with transparency
the idea is to have 2 layers- underneath is the layer with original grayscale image and the top layer- fully filled with the desired color. then you composite these images using "COMPOSITE_LIGHTEN" (you might use other methods, like darken for example- if you have white objects on a black background)
this is the code
$base_color="#475c0a";
$im=new Imagick($orig_file);
$im2 = new Imagick();
$im2->newImage($im->getImageWidth(), $im->getImageHeight(), new ImagickPixel($base_color) );
$im->compositeImage($im2, Imagick::COMPOSITE_LIGHTEN, 0, 0);
$im->writeImage($new_image_path);
hope this will help someone out