Can I make my own Metadata files and tell Plex only to pull from there?

In short, no, not natively. The only thing Plex will take from a local metadata info file (typically a file with the extension ‘.nfo’) is an IMDB tt number in order to match a movie.

There is a third-party agent that might be of use. I haven’t used it, so I don’t know if it still works, or how easy it is to set up or use. It may only work if you used .nfo files created by Kodi (formerly XBMC).

There are a couple of feature requests to add .nfo support. This one has the most votes. You may want to add your vote.