There is no way to exclude pakages, already included into the PRODUCT_PACKAGES, e.g. by some of the root mk files, but we can define own module, which will override every package, we want to exclude from the build, using LOCAL_OVERRIDES_PACKAGES.
Every package, included to the PRODUCT_REMOVE_PACKAGES list will be overriden by this project. Additionally, you can use PRODUCT_REMOVE_FILES to remove redundant files, copied by PRODUCT_COPY_FILES.
PRODUCT_REMOVE_PACKAGES := \
Contacts \
Calendar
PRODUCT_REMOVE_FILES := \
$(TARGET_COPY_OUT_PRODUCT)/media/audio
# Do not forget to include this package as well
PRODUCT_PACKAGES += package_filter