The situation is different, think about nodes and encrypted channels between them.
If you encrypt traffic on your host properly and send it off to a remote host, your ISP (node(s) in between) sees encrypted traffic.
If you create an encrypted VPN connection to a VPN providers server and then configure a second encrypted connection (e.g. through Tor) from that VPN providers server to a remote host, then your VPN provider is able to see exactly what happened on that VPN providers server; since that’s where the encryption (and decryption) happens.
If you encrypt traffic on your host properly and send it off to a remote host, your ISP (node(s) in between) sees encrypted traffic.
If you create an encrypted VPN connection to a VPN providers server and then configure a second encrypted connection (e.g. through Tor) from that VPN providers server to a remote host, then your VPN provider is able to see exactly what happened on that VPN providers server; since that’s where the encryption (and decryption) happens.