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I have been painting for many years and have always painted over white primer and added washes to the darker areas.
I there a benefit to painting over black rather than white and if so, how many layers will I need to get the same affect?

It's mostly a matter of personal preference. Since acrylic paints, especially dilute ones, are somewhat transparent, painting over black will give you darker, more muted tones. Any recesses left unpainted will be left black, so darker schemes can "cheat" on the deep shadows, a bit. It's not as if painting over black instantly shades your models, though, so don't put away those washes just yet.

As for number of layers, it's impossible to say. How dilute is your paint? How much went over the white you used? White basecoats obviously result in brighter, bolder colors unless enough paint is layered on top to achieve total opacity - black basecoats are the same, just coming from the other end of the spectrum.

Basically, if you normally paint in dilute layers to achieve shading gradients, stick to white primer. If you apply paint until your basecoats are essentially opaque, black may tone down your colors, a tad, but its main benefit is the ability to make areas black or near black simply by ignoring them.

I'm a fan of the black basecoat I think mostly because I've always painted things that have benefitted from looking 'dirty' (Skaven, Chaos etc). I find with a black basecoat when you paint over with brighter colours like red you get a messy finish which can look pretty good on certain figures. Obviously if you're painting Eldar or similar style figures you want nice clean and crisp colours so a white basecoat would probably be best.

Black makes everything very muted, white makes everything pop. It is easier to get colors to show on white, especially yellows and reds. Most "how do you paint x color" threads come from black primer users.

I would say black takes a bit less skill to get decent results with, as it is very friendly to the dry-brush heavy techniques many people start out with. White can make everything look cartoony and flat if you aren't careful.

In the end it you just choose which one will save you the most times. Imeprial Fists? Prime white. Necrons? Black.

Ironically I'm painting necrons and using white primer, as I have tons of it. I prime it and then have to base coat everything black anyways. Yay airbrush.

From my experiences the main advantage of black primer is that you can easily paint metallic colors on black primer and they look great. Where it typically takes more work to get metallic colors to look right with a white base. As people above me have mentioned already the black does help with muted tones and makes base coating black armored troops a breeze.

I first started priming my guys white to do my blood angels and primed black for my death company troops. Lately though, I just prime everything grey and go from there. It is a nice neutral base to start with and feel like it is easier to get the color you see on the pot since the primer isn't adding or subtracting anything.

As i am currently painting blood angels I will stick to white

Sounds like you made the right decision. I used white primer for my Blood Angels.

Similarly to others, I use black for vehicles, terrain and other models where I will be using a drybrush-heavy technique. I use white for almost every miniature, though this is because I brush-dip everything with Minwax, so you need the lighter colors under the dip and the dip itself darkens the recesses of the miniature.

I use a white primer for my Orks, then I coat the entire unit in Devlan Mud. I use a twice applied thraka green wash for the skin. The rest of the model is done with a mix of acrylic paints with devlan mud or badab black, and with metallics drybrushing. I always finish the model with another slap on of devlan mud. Makes the horde look dark, dirty and a lot less cartoony, but the trade off is the colors are quite muted.

This is the way I have always done it, and it is sort of silly because my end result is a lot closer to black on the spectrum than white.

My vehicles on the other hand are always primed black, then drybrushed.

Basically, if you want to use mostly washes start with white. If you want to rely mostly on drybrushing start with black.