Scattering of acoustic waves from an inhomogeneous medium can be described by the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation. For scattering problems in free space, Vainikko proposed a fast spectral solution method that exploits the convolution structure of this equation's integral operator by using the fast Fourier transform. In a planar 3--dimensional waveguide, the integral operator of the Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation fails to be a convolution. In this paper, we show that the separable structure of the kernel nevertheless allows to construct fast spectral collocation methods similar to Vainikko's technique. The numerical analysis of this method requires smooth material parameters; if the material parameters are, say, discontinuous, no theoretical statement on convergence is available. We show how to construct a Galerkin variant of Vainikko's method for which a rigorous convergence analysis is available even for discontinuous materials. For several distant scattering objects inside the 3--dimensional waveguide this discretization technique leads to a computational domain consisting of one large box containing all scatterers, and hence many unnecessary unknowns. However, the integral equation can be reformulated as a coupled system with unknowns defined on the different parts of the scatterer. Discretizing this coupled system by a combined spectral/multipole approach yields an efficient method for waveguide scattering from multiple objects.