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The good old minister was taking a walk along the graveyard, to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown...Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the open window...Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a pint of morning's milk.

The forest in which Goodman Brown spends the night in a test of his Puritan faith is described as a place of foreboding and the domain of the devil himself. In fact, the moment that Goodman Brown steps onto the forest path, the devil is there to greet him. As he continues on his way, Brown is surrounded by sights and sounds that unnerve him:

The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds; the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while, sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church-bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.

Ultimately, the forest ceremony is presented as a dark subversion of the rituals of Christian worship.

A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own.

You are right to focus on the importance of setting in this excellent short story, and in particular the way in which the forest is described indicates the kind of evil actions that will occur there and the evil intentions of Goodman Brown in seeking to venture there in the first place. This is of course compared to the village of Salem. Note how the path that Goodman Brown takes into the forest is described:

He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

Note the way that the open streets of the village, where everybody can be seen, and which are well lit, are compared to the "narrow path" of the forest, which is immediately enclosed by the dark trees, which are "gloomy." The road itself is said to be "dreary" and there are so many trees that even though you appear to be plunged into solitude, you could in fact be surronded by an "unseen multitude." The fear and danger in such a position is clear and obvious, and presents us with a massive contrast to the relatively safe village of Salem.

Usually, when one thinks of the use of the literary technique called "foil," it is associated with determining opposite traits between two characters. Foil characters help to compare and to contrast between the two, whether it be physically, emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise. Sometimes foil characters are complete opposites in moral standing, but they equal each other in power or energy. Then, these two foil characters are pitted against one another to see what would happen in a battle and who would come off conqueror.

Here, however, the question asks how the nighttime forest and the daytime in a colonial Puritan village might be foils. Comparatively, both the forest and the village are filled with people whom Young Goodman Brown knows; all neighbors, friends, and family end up in the forest at some point during the night, while they also live in the village during the day. The difference is, though, that during the nighttime in the forest, people aren't who they say they are. They don't act like they normally do during the day. In contrast, of course, the nighttime forest brings with it darkness, mystery, and confusion until everyone is revealed to have a part in dark journey. Young Goodman Brown is demoralized as he realizes that nothing is as it seems during the light of day and that none are immune to the temptations of sin (represented by the dark forest and the activities found therein). Therefore, the nighttime forest in the short story of Young Goodman Brown serves as an equal, yet opposite, setting for daytime in the village.

Brown returns home to his wife, Faith, eternally stained and dejected by the night's revelations. He is never the same, even though he vowed to himself "after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven."