From the link I provided above:
The extended VMware Tools support does two things:
1. It allows virtual machines running older versions of VMware Tools to run in a supported configuration on newer versions of ESXi.
2. It allows virtual machines running newer versions of VMware Tools to run in a supported configuration on older versions of ESX/ESXi.
So, the answer is YES, you can run a VM with VMware Tools from ESXi 5.5 on a ESXi 4.1 without problems.