The possibilities for this will definitely vary depending upon the phone model as Android phones differ in hardware and what is affected when the phone is wiped/formatted/overwritten. If the phone is rooted, and/or if a new ROM was flashed to the phone, that will make things yet more uncertain. If it is a Samsung, older model Motorola or older model HTC, there might be a chance of recovery. It is less likely with LGs due to hardware. The only way to try and recover the pre-existing data is to have a tool to be able to image the phone's entire memory and then scan it. Cellebrite offers a tool that can do such imaging but it's quite expensive so you'd be better off contacting a data recovery company with strong mobile device capabilities. Many offer free evaluations so you can hear back if they think it's recoverable and how much it would cost before anything else.
Bottom line is that yes, from the little information here I can say there is a chance it's possible, but from your description it may be slim. That's as far as I can guess without actually having it looked at by one of our engineers.
It sounds like a tough situation so good luck!