Take a look a the book of S. Maier "Plasmonics:Fundamentals and Applications" (Springer, 2007). There is a chapter on various ways of exciting surface plasmon polaritons at planar interfaces: with charged particle impact, prism coupling, grating coupling, with highly focused optical beams, near field excitation (Ch.3). Another chapter (Ch.4) describes imaging of surface plasmon polaritons via near-field microscopy, fluorescence, leakage radiation and scattered light imaging. It would be too lengthy to go through all of it here. So, I'd recommend you to read this excellent book. Needless to say, there is also a chapter there on localized surface plasmons.
In terms of experimets i suggest : angle resolved transmission and reflection, its a easy way, dispersive features are SPR, non dispersive features are localized plasmons, see also the paper attached, its not the only one... and of course follow the first answer by Serge Grabtchak
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