It would not have any affect on which muscles get biased. Assuming the angle of your upper arms stay the same, then the moment arm is the same which means the same force is applied to the same area.
One difference would be holding the weight closer to your body will decrease the leverage against your shoulder. This would allow you to lift more weight. The force applied to your shoulder would be the same so it makes no difference. It doesn't magically make your shoulder stronger or anything. It just decreases the leverage against it.
You could use this to your advantage and do a "mechanical dropset" by starting the set at the harder position and moving to the weaker position as the set progresses. So you'd start the lateral raise with your arms as straight out as your comfortable with. Then as you fatigue throughout the set, you start curling the weight to you to decrease the leverage. I'd recommend only doing this on the last set because it's going to really obliterate your shoulders.