We develop a theory of Čech‐Bott‐Chern cohomology and in this context we naturally come up with the relative Bott‐Chern cohomology. In fact, Bott‐Chern cohomology has two relatives and they all arise from a single complex. Thus, we study these three cohomologies in a unified way and obtain a long exact sequence involving the three. We then study the localization problem of characteristic classes in the relative Bott‐Chern cohomology. For this, we define the cup product and integration in our framework and we discuss local and global duality morphisms. After reviewing some materials on connections, we give a vanishing theorem relevant to our localization. With these, we prove a residue theorem for vector bundles admitting a Hermitian connection compatible with an action of the non‐singular part of a singular distribution. As a typical case, we discuss the action of a distribution on the normal bundle of an invariant submanifold (the so‐called Camacho–Sad action) and give a specific example.