Highlight if Cell contains asterisk(*)

Conditional formatting - Highlight cells rules - Text that contains, then enter ~* in the box and choose your formatting.

Do you mean highlighting individual characters, or highlighting cells that contain any characters in a list?

Assuming you have the special characters in range E1:E10 (you can adjust as necessary) and that you are applying this to a range starting with cell A1, use:

=SUM(COUNTIF($A1,"*"&$E$1:$E$10&"*"))>0

If you are using the wildcard characters * ? or ~ in your list, enter them as ~* ~? and ~~ in the relevant cells.

You could use Find and Replace found on the Ribbon.