how do I assign more than one material to same face or vertexs

How do I assign more than one Material to same Face or Vertexes then have both the materials work. Kind of like layers in the Layers in a Image editing program.

A face can only have one material

A material can be comprised of various textures and you can mix materials in the node editor to create a final material

How would you go about mixing Materials in the node editor where I could layer them. What I want to do is have a shadeless material as the base then have multiple other materials to control the shadows and other effects on top that.
Edit: I figured out a method