The scattering of a uniform plane electromagnetic wave form an inhomogeneous cylindrical plasma in the presence of an axial static magnetic field has been treated in the eikonal approximation. A simple expression is presented for the scattering function for ordinary wave scattering. This expression is expected to be a good approximation at small angles and for refractive indices close to unity ( omega 2<< omega p2). In order to show the accuracy of the eikonal approximation numerical comparisons with the exact results have been presented for the simple model of homogeneous plasma. Implications of the eikonal results in the plasma diagnostics have been discussed.