For me (Debian Sarge VPS) is_link returns true even for directories if you don't add a trailing slash to the filename.
<?php
if ($dir{strlen($dir)-1} == '/') $dir = substr($dir, 0, -1);
is_link($dir);
?>
This works for me. It can't detect a symlink somewhere in a complete path, though (i.e. is_link(/www/somedir/file.php) will return false, just as is_link(/www/) would)